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UNIVERSAL
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SUMMER, 1914
ROGER MARTIN DU CARD
Translated from the French by
STUART GILBERT
LONDON
JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
Mobel Prize for Literature^ ig^y
‘LES THIBAULT’
(/o voh, Paris igzs-^)
English edition in two volumes:
THE THIBAULTS
SUMMER, 1914
This English translationof l’ete, 1914 {Paris, iggS-p) first published
igp
Printed in Great Britain by
UNWIN BROTHERS LIMITED, LONDON AND WOKING
for John Lane The Bodley Head Limited
8 Bury Place, London, WiC.i.
Je didie
'les thibault’
h la memoire fraternelle
de
PIERRE MARGARITIS
dont la morty d Vhdpital
militaire, U jo octobre
jgiSf aneantit ViBuvrt
puissante qui mdnssait
dans son cmr tourmenti
et pur.
R M G.
CONTENTS
PART I
PAGE
1. Sunday, June 28, 1914. — Jacques sits for his portrait
in Paterson’s studio 3
2. Sunday, June 28. — Jacques’ conversation with Van-
heede at the Hotel du Globe 9
3. Sunday, June 28. — Jacques visits Meynestrel . . 15
4. Sunday, June 28. — The Geneva group of inter-
nationalists 27
5. Sunday, June 28. — gathering at ‘Headquarters’ . 31
6. The same, continued 43
t'
7. The same, continued 53
8. Sunday, June 28. — Jacques debates with Meynestrel
and Mithoerg the necessity of violence in revolu-
tionary movements 64
9. Sunday, June 28. — News reaches Geneva of the
Serajevo crime 77
10. Sunday, July 12. — A meeting at Meynestrel’s. Boehm
and Jacques report on the political outlook at
Vienna 82
1 1 . The same, continued 95
»
12. Sunday, July 12. — Meynestrel’s reactions to the threat
of war 103
13. Sunday, July 19. — Anne de Battaincourt’s rendezvous
with Antoine 105
JX
i JiMTs
14. Sunday, July 19.— Jacques visits Antoine .
15. Sunday, July 19. The brothers compare notes on
the European situation
16. Sunday, July 19.— Jacques and Antoine dine
tite-d-tite
17. Sunday, July 19.— Jacques and Antoine discuss the
social problem. Jenny breaks in on their debate
18. Sunday, July 19.— Jerome de Fontanin’s tragic
gesture
19. Sunday, July 19, after midnight. — A political con-
fabulation at the Cafe du Progres ....
20. Sunday, July 19. — Antoine passes the night at the
Nursing Home
21. Sunday, July 19. — Mme. de Fontanin at Jerome’s
bedside
22. Sunday, July 19. — Antoine’s musings on his brother’s
socialistic views
23. Sunday, July 19. — At Mme. de Fontanin’s request
Antoine summons Pastor Gregory ....
24. Monday, July 20.- Jacques’ day in Paris. Before
returning to Geneva he looks up Daniel at the
Nursing Home
PART II
1. Monday, July 20. — Anne and Antoine dine at a road-
house near Paris
2. Tuesday, July 21.— Jacques returns to Geneva .
3. Wednesday, July 22.— Jacques is sent to Antwerp
on a special mission
PAOB
Ji.')
128
149
•53
170
181
18G
192
197
200
204
223
238
254
X
CONTENTS
4. Thursday, July 23. — Paris, again ....
5. Friday, July 24. — Mme. de Fontanin’s meditation
beside her husband’s coffin
6. Friday, July 24.— Jenny’s afternoon at the Fontanins’
flat
7. Friday, July 24.— Jacques visits Daniel’s studio
8. Friday, July 24.— Jacques calls at the HumaniU offices
9. Saturday, July 25. — Mme. de Fontanin and Daniel
spend the morning together at the Nursing Home
10. Saturday, July 23.— Jacques attends Jerome’s funeral
11. Saturday, July 25. --Jacques lunches with Antoine .
12. Saturday, July 25.— Jacques sees Daniel off at the
Gare de I’Est
13. Saturday, July 25. -Jenny’s panic flight and Jacques’
pursuit
14. Saturday, July 25.— Jacques and Jenny in the little
garden near St. V’incent’s Church ....
15. Sund.'iy, July 26.— The war-clouds darken
16. Sunday, July 26.- A Sunday afternoon gathering
at Antoine’s flat
17. Sunday, July 26. — Rumelles confes.ses to Antoine his
apprehensions of a war
18. Sunday, July 26.— Jacques’ first visit to Jenny at her
mother’s flat
19. Monday, July 27.— Jacques is instructed to proceed to
Berlin, on a secret mission
20. Monday, July 27.— Jacques’ second visit to Jenny .
PAGE
258
265
274
278
290
296
303
308
3»9
325
330
340
352
370
378
392
402
XI
CONTENTS
21. Monday, July 27. — The political tension increases .
22. Monday, July 27. — Jacques and Jenny dine together
at a little restaurant
23. Monday, July 27. — Jacques attends a mass demon-
stration on the boulevards
24. Tuesday, July 28. — On secret service at Berlin,
Jacques visits Vorlauf
25. Tuesday, July 28. — Col. Stolbach’s misadventure .
26. Wednesday, July 29.— Jacques rejoins his friends
from ‘Headquarters’ at Brussels ....
27. Wednesday, July 29. — Meynestrel studies the Stol-
bach dossier
28. Wednesday, July 29. — The mass meeting at Brussels
29. Wednesday, July 29. — The pacifist parade at Brussels
30. Wednesday, July 29. — Alfreda leaves Meynestrel.
A tragedy averted
31. Thursday, July 30.— Jacques returns to Paris and
visits Jenny
32. Thursday, July 30. — ^Antoine calls on Rumelles at
the Quai d’Orsay
33. Thursday, July 30. — Simon de Battaincourt consults
Antoine, who decides to break with Anne
34. Thursday, July 30. — Jacques addresses a gathering
in the Montrouge District
35. Friday, July 31. — Paris faces up to war.
36. Friday, July 31. — ^A luncheon-party at Antoine’s flat
37. Friday, July 31. — Jacques and Antoine define their
respective attitudes towards national service .
xii
PAGE
406
414
425
433
441
449
457
466
472
478
484
493
501
512
529
542
556
CONTENTS
38. Friday, July 31.— Jacques and Jenny spend the after-
noon in socialist circles
39. Friday, July 31. — The assassination of Jaures .
40. Saturday, August i. — Jacques at the Humanite offices
41. Saturday, August i. — Anne tries in vain to get in
touch with Antoine
42. Saturday, August i. — Jacques lunches with Jenny at
her flat
43. Saturday, August i.— Orders are posted for general
mobilization
44. Saturday, August r. — Jacques and Jenny witness
Muller’s arrival at the Gare du Nord
45. Saturday, August i.— Jacques brings Jenny with him
to visit Antoine
46. Saturday, August i. — ^Paris under the shadow of
mobilization
47. Saturday, August i. — The reactions of the socialists
to the order for mobilization
48. Sunday, August 2. — Mme. de Fontanin’s home-
coming
49. Sunday, August 2. — Antoine joins his regiment
50. Sunday, August 2. — Jacques resolves to fight war to
the end
51. Sunday, August 2. — Jacques and Jenny confront
Mme. de Fontanin
52. Sunday, August 2.— -An angry scene between Jenny
and her mother
53. Sunday, August 2. — The last meeting of Jacques and
Jenny
xiii
PAGE
570
579
590
599
603
61 1
617
624
638
648
662
668
679
689
698
707
CONTENTS
PAGE
54. Monday, August 3.— Jacques’ return to Geneva . 715
55. Tuesday, August 4.— Jacques’ musings in the train
to Basel 725
56. Tuesday, August 4.— Jacques sketches out his Message 739
57. August 5 to 8.— Jacques’ sojourn at Basel . . . 745
58. Sunday, August 9. — Final preparations . . . 758
59. Sunday, August 9. — The meeting on the hill-top . 764
60. Monday, August 10. — The Last Act .... 775
61. Monday, August 10. — The French retreat in Alsace . 780
EPILOGUE
1. In Hospital 81 1
2. ‘Mademoiselle’s’ Funeral 827
3. Antoine revisits his old home 836
4. Gise confides in Antoine 844
5. A Dinner at Maxim’s 857
6. Antoine’s Dream 868
7. At Maisons-Laffitte 877
8. Antoine’s first talk with Jenny 889
9. A second talk with Jenny 900
10. Mme. de Fontanin’s War Hospital .... 906
11. Little Paul 923
12. An evening at the Hostel 930
13. Dr. Philip’s Verdict 943
14. Air-raid 964
XIV
CONTENTS
PAGE
A BATCH OF LETTERS
A batch of letters 973
ANTOINE’S DIARY
July ■ 987
August 1012
September 1 043
October 1 065
November 1 076
XV
PART I
I
Sunday, June 28, igi^
JACQUES SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT IN PATERSON’s STUDIO
Jacques was getting tired ; his neck was stiff with holding
the pose, and the only movement he dared make was with his
eyes to cast a furious look at his tormentor.
In two elastic strides Paterson had backed to the wall;
palette in hand and brush in air, he was bending his head
this side and that, in rapt contemplation of the canvas on his
easel three yards away. Jacques was thinking, ‘What a lucky
chap he is to have his painting!’ His eyes fell on his wrist-
watch. ‘Got to have that article finished by this evening. But
a fat lot Pat cares for that, confound him !’
The heat was stifling; ruthlessly the sunlight blazed in
through the window. Though the room, in former days a
kitchen, was on the top floor of a building near the Cathedral
and high above the town, neither the Alps nor the lake could
be seen ; only the dazzling blue of the June sky confronted it.
At the back of the room, under the sloping roof, two mat-
tresses sprawled side by side on the tiled floor. Clothes hung on
nails along the walls; in the sink, on the rusty kitchen-stove,
and along the ledge of the iron hood above it, lay a j'umble
of the most incongruous objects: a dinted basin, a pair of
slippers, a cigar-box filled with empty paint-tubes, a shaving-
brush caked with lather, some cups and plates, two dead roses
in a tumbler, a bulldog pipe. A number of canvases stood on
the floor, their faces to the wall against which they leaned.
The Englishman was naked from the waist up. His teeth
were clenched and he was breathing heavily through his nose,
as if he had been sprinting.
‘Yes, it’s a teaser I’ he grumbled, without turning his head.
Sweat was glistening on his chest, and the muscles rippled
3
SUMMER, 1914
under the fine-grained skin, white with the limpid whiteness
peculiar to northerners. A triangle of shadow at the base of his
thorax bespoke his leanness. Under the old, threadbare trousers
the sinews of his legs could be seen quivering with the strain
of his intense preoccupation.
‘And there’s not a shred of tobacco left !’ he sighed.
On his arrival Jacques had produced three cigarettes from
his pocket; the painter had smoked them greedily, in quick
succession, at the beginning of the sitting. Hunger was gnawing
at his stomach, which had gone empty since the previous day,
but that was nothing new to him. He was thinking: ‘How
marvellously luminous that forehead is ! Have I enough white?’
He glanced towards the tube of white lying on the floor, flat
as a razor-blade. He owed a good hundred francs to Guerin,
who kept the paint-shop, but luckily Gudrin, an ex-anarchist
recently converted to socialism, was a good comrade. . . .
His eyes still intent on the portrait, Paterson made a wry
face, as though he had been alone. His brush described a flourish
on the empty air. And suddenly the blue eyes turned, settling
on Jacques with an unblinking birdlike stare, a magpie’s,
inhumanly intent.
Jacques was amused. ‘He’s looking at me exactly as he’d
look at an apple in a bowl,’ he thought. ‘What a nuisance
having that article to finish !’
When Paterson had shyly asked his leave to paint this
portrait, Jacques had not dared say ‘No.’ For months the
painter, too hard up to hire a model and incapable of getting
through a day without plying his brush, had had to exercise
his talent on makeshift still-lifes. Paterson had said ‘Four or
five sittings at most,’ but this Sunday morning was the ninth
time that Jacques, inwardly chafing at the imposition, had
forced himself to trudge uphill to the highest point of the Old
Town, and hold a pose that never lasted less than two hours.
Paterson had started dabbing his brush feverishly on the
palette. Once more, flexing his knees like a diver testing the
springboard, he paused for a moment, stock-still, his bird-like
eyes intent on Jacques. Suddenly his arm shot forward like
a fencer’s, to plant a speck of white on a precise spot of the
4
SUNDAY, JUNE 28, I914
canvas. That done, he backed once more to the wall, wagging
his head, screwing up his eyes and snorting like an angry lap-
dog. At last, with a smile, he turned towards his victim.
‘There’s such . . . such forcefulness, you know, in those
eyebrows of yours, your temples, the way your hair sticks up !
Sorry, old chap, but it’s got me absolutely beat !’
After depositing his brushes and palette in the sink, he swung
nimbly round, crossed the room, and plumped down on one
of the mattresses.
‘That’s enough for to-day.’
Jacques heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Can I have a look? Yes?
By Jove, you’ve made a lot of headway this sitting !’
It was a three-quarter length portrait, ending at the knees,
and showed Jacques seated, his left shoulder receding in per-
spective, his right shoulder, arm and elbow advancing boldly
into the foreground. His sinewy hand, splayed on his thigh,
made an effective highlight near the bottom of the picture.
His head, though he was looking up towards the light — ^which
came from the left — drooped a little over the left shoulder, as
if weighed down by the thick mass of hair and spacious brow.
Half the face was in shadow, but, owing to the slant of the
head, the whole forehead was bathed in sunlight. The dark
lock, shot with ruddy gleams, that traversed it from left to
right, brought out by contrast the luminosity of the skin. The
artist had been particularly successful in getting on to his
canvas the texture of the hair that came down, in a stiff,
serried growth, low on the forehead. The white shirt was open
at the collar, and the heavy under-jaw rested on it. Though
the drawing of the lips was faulty, the bitter, tormented line
of the large mouth gave a savage grandeur to the face. Under
the rugged brows, the eyes were half submerged in shadow,
but their expression was as frank and forthright as could be
desired ; indeed the artist had overdone this quality, there was
a certain effrontery in the gaze that was unlike Jacques.
Paterson had just realized this. On the whole he had success-
fully brought out the impression of massive strength conveyed
by forehead, shoulders, and chin; but he had lost hope of
contriving to suggest the moods of melancholy, pensiveness
5
SUMMER, 1914
and boldness that flickered successively, never intermingling,
in Jacques’ eyes.
‘You’ll be coming again to-morrow, won’t you?’
‘Suppose I’ll have to !’ Jacques assented gloomily.
Paterson had risen and was feeling in the pockets of a
waterproof hanging above the bed. He broke into a merry
laugh.
‘Mithoerg’s a wily bird ! He never leaves any baccy in his
pockets nowadays.’
When Paterson laughed he seemed once more the mis-
chievous youngster he had doubtless been five or six years
earlier, when he had broken with his puritanical family and
run away from Oxford to come and live in Switzerland.
‘No luck !’ he grinned. ‘I’d have liked to offer you a cigar-
ette for your Sunday treat !’
He could do without food more easily than without tobacco ;
more easily without tobacco than without paints. In any case
he was rarely out of paints, or tobacco, or food, for long.
He and his friends formed part of a large group of revolu-
tionary youth, all more or less penniless, who had flocked to
Geneva and were vaguely affiliated to the recognized organi-
zations. Somehow they survived — though how they managed
it was a mystery. A favoured few, the intellectuals like Jacques,
wrote for newspapers and magazines. Others, trained workers
from different parts of the world — typesetters, draughtsmen,
watchmakers and the like — had more or less regular employ-
ment and shared their earnings with their unemployed com-
rades. But most had no fixed work, and took whatever came
their way — obscure, ill-paid jobs, which they dropped the
moment they had a little money in their pockets. There were
a good many students amongst them, young men with frayed
cuffs and collars, who kept themselves alive by lessons, research-
work in libraries, or menial tasks in laboratories. Luckily they
were never all destitute at the same moment. There was
always someone with a well-lined purse to treat the others,
roaming the streets with empty pockets, to a hunk of bread,
a sausage, a cup of coffee, and a packet of cigarettes. Such
mutual aid was furnished as a matter of course. A man can
•
6
SUNDAY, JUNE 28, I9I4
get used to eating only once — and a scratch meal at that — a
day, when he is young and lives in fellowship with others,
sharing their interests, convictions, political ideas and aspira-
tions. Some, like Paterson, humorously vaunted the pangs of
an empty stomach, the emptier the better, as inducing a fine
frenzy of the brain that could be turned to good account.
There was some truth behind the jest. The sparing diet helped
to keep up that mental exaltation which gave such zest to the
interminable palavers they indulged in at all hours of the day,
in public squares, in cafes, in their lodgings, but, above all, at
‘Headquarters.’ This name had been given to the place where
they foregathered to exchange the latest news transmitted by
fellow-revolutionaries from abroad, to compare experiences
and (heoneS; and with fraternal fervour to pool their efforts
for building up the New Social Order.
Standing in front of the shaving-mirror, Jacques was putting
on his collar and tie.
‘Where are you off to in such a hurry, old chap?’ Paterson
lazily enquired. He was sprawling across the bed, half naked,
with his arm extended.
Paterson had thin, girlish wrists, but a man’s hands ; slim
ankles, but typical English feet. His head was small ; the sun-
light gave his pale-gold hair, matted by perspiration, the rich
patina of an ancient cameo. In his eyes, a little too translu-
cent to be expressive, naivety seemed always struggling with
distress.
‘I’d a lot of things to say to you,’ he went on languidly.
‘One thing is that you left Headquarters too early last night.’
‘I’d had enough of it. They go round and round in a circle,
always saying the same things.’
‘Yes. But the argument took a really exciting turn last night.
A pity you weren’t there. The Pilot wound up by telling
Boissonis off. Oh, only a few words, but the sort of words that
give one the shivers, if you know what I mean.’
His tone betrayed a rankling antipathy. Jacques had often
noticed the hostile admiration the Englishman had for
Meynestrel, ‘the Pilot’ as he was usually called, but had never
discussed it with him. Personally he was deeply attached
7
SUMMER, 1914
to Meynestrel, whom he not only cherished as a friend, but
revered as a master mind.
He turned briskly. ‘What words? What did he say?’
Paterson did not reply at once ; he was staring at the ceiling
with an odd smile on his lips.
‘It came at thg end, a bolt from the blue. A good many had
cleared off by then, like you. He let Boissonis rattle on, with
that way he has, you know, of not seeming to listen. Suddenly
he bent towards Alfreda, who was sitting at his feet as usual,
and said his piece, very qhickly, without looking at anyone in
particular. Wait a bit! I’ll try to remember the exact words
. . . “Nietzsche did away with the idea of God. And replaced
it by the concept of ideal Man. That was nothing much — only
a first step forward. It’s up to modern atheism to go one
better and do away with the concept of ideal Man as well.” ’
Jacques made an impatient gesture. ‘Go on ! What else did
he say?’
‘Wait a bit! Boissonis asked, “And replace it by what?”
The Pilot smiled — you know that terrifying smile of his — and
rapped out: “By nothing!” ’
Jacques, too, smiled — to avoid having to answer. He was
feeling hot, tired with the long sitting, and eager to get back
to his work. He did not in the least wish to embark on a meta-
physical discussion with the worthy Paterson. He ceased
smiling and merely said:
‘One thing is certain, Pat ; the Pilot’s one of the most noble-
minded of men.’
Propping himself on an elbow, the Englishman looked
Jacques in the eyes.
‘“By nothing!” An absolutely monstrous thing to say.
Don’t you agree?’
As Jacques made no reply, he let himself sink back on to
the mattress.
‘I’m always wondering, old chap, what sort of life the Pilot
can have led. To reach that stage qf — of desiccation, he must
have had a damnably hard row to hoe, have breathed a pretty
noxious air. By the way, Thibault,’ he went on almost at once
and in exactly the same tone, but fixing his eyes intently on
8
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
Jacques, ‘there’s something I’ve been wanting for ages to ask
you, as you know both of them so well. Do you think Alfreda’s
happy with her “Pilot”? ’
It struck Jacques that he had never put that question to
himself. On the face of it, the question was natural enough.
But to answer it would be venturing on delicate ground, from
which some obscure instinct warned him off, under the present
circumstances. With a prudently evasive shrug of his shoulders
he went on knotting his tie.
In any case Paterson did not seem put out by his silence
and was lying down again.
‘Are you coming to Janotte’s lecture to-night?’ he asked.
Jacques welcomed the change of subject. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve
a job to finish off for the Beacon. If it goes smoothly. I’ll be at
Headquarters at about six.’ He had put his hat on. ‘Perhaps
I’ll see you there then. So long, Pat !’
Paterson sat up. ‘You haven’t answered me about Alfreda.’
Jacques had opened the door. He turned back and after a
slight hesitation replied :
‘I really don’t know . . . But why shouldn’t she be happy?’
2
Sunday y June 28
JACQUES’ CONVERSATION WITH VANHEEDE AT THE
HOTEL DU GLOBE
Half-past one had struck and all Geneva was lingering
still over its Sunday dinner. Sunlight fell sheer upon the
Bourg-de-Four Square, shadowless but for a purplish black
rim around the houses.
As Jacques crossed the deserted Square, only the ripple of the
fountain fretted the silence. He walked quickly, with his head
9 B*
SUMMER, 1914
down, sunbeams beating on the nape of his neck, his eyes
seared by the shimmering asphalt. Though he had no great
fear of the midsummer heat at Geneva — a blue-and-white
effulgence, implacable yet healthy, seldom overpowering — he
was glad to discover some patches of shade as he walked by
the street-stalls in the narrow Rue de la Fontaine.
He was thinking out his article, a description, several pages
long, of Fritsch’s latest work, which was to appear in the
‘New Books’ section of the Beacon. He had completed two-
thirds of it, but the opening page would need to be entirely
rewritten. It might be a good idea, he reflected, to begin with
the passage from Lamartine which he had copied out two
days previously in the Public Library. ‘There are two kinds
of patriotism. One consists of all the malice, all the prejudices
and all the stupid enmities that nations, gulled by governments
whose interest it is to keep them estranged, foster, each for
each. There is another and very different patriotism, comprising
all the verities and all the rights that nations share in common.’
The idea behind the words was sound and generous enough,
but Jacques could not help smiling at the terms in which it
was expressed. ‘The revolutionary jargon of 1848, presumably.
But, really, our vocabulary nowadays is very much the same.
There are exceptions,’ he reminded himself at once. ‘Those
aren’t by any means the words the Pilot would have used.’
The thought of Meynestrel switched his mind back to Paterson’s
enquiry. Was Alfreda happy? A question he hardly dared to
answer one way or the other. Can one ever be sure, he won-
dered, where women are concerned? Puzzling creatures,
women ! His experience with Sophia Kammerzinn crossed his
mind. Since he had left her father’s pension at Lausanne, he
had rarely given her a thought. In the first months she had
made several trips to Geneva, to see him. Then she had ceased
coming. Still he had always given her a cordial welcome.
Perhaps she had ended by realizing that he had no particular
attachment for her. A vague regret came over him. A queer
girl, Sophia. He had not replaced her.
He quickened his pace. It was a longish walk to the Place
Grenus where he was staying, on the far side of the Rhone,
10
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
in a poor district all in alley-ways and slums. Tucked away in
a corner of the square, the centre of which was occupied by a
public convenience, was the Hotel du Globe, a decrepit three-
storey building. Above the low entrance-door, in guise of
signboard, hung a glass terrestial globe, which was illuminated
at night. Unlike the other hotels in that part of the town, it
did not harbour prostitutes. The hotel was managed by two
bachelors, socialists of long standing, the Vercellini brothers.
Almost all the rooms were rented to party militants, who paid
little and only when in funds. Never had the Vercellinis turned
a lodger out for failing to pay his bill. On occasion, however,
they had ejected suspects, for all sorts of queer customers, the
worst and the best of men, flocked to their hotel.
Jacques lived on the top floor; the room was cramped but
clean. Unfortunately its only window gave on to the landing,
and all the sounds and smells pouring up the stairs forced
their way in, if it was left open. The only way of working in
reasonable comfort was to keep the window shut and turn on
the electric light. The furniture consisted of a narrow bed, a
basin clamped to the wall, a wardrobe, a table and one chair.
The table was small and always crowded, so when he wrote
Jacques usually sat on the bed, with an atlas on his knees
doing duty for a desk.
He had been working for half an hour when three light
taps, spaced at regular intervals, sounded on the door.
‘Come in !’ he called.
A roguish little face with a mop of unkempt hair peeped in.
It was Vanheede, the albino. He, too, had left Lucerne in the
previous year, at the same time as Jacques, and was living in
the Globe Hotel.
‘Sorry, Baulthy — am I disturbing you?’ He was one of the
few who still called Jacques by his former nom de plume, though
since his father’s death Jacques had taken to signing his
articles under his real name. ‘I saw Monier at the Cafe
Landolt,’ he said. ‘The Pilot had given him two messages for
you. Number one, that he wants to see you and will stay in
for you till five; number two, that your article won’t appear
in this week’s Beacon, so you’ve no need to hand it in to-night.’
SUMMER, 1914
Jacques laid his two hands flat on the sheets of paper in
front of him, and leant back against the wall.
‘That’s a blessing!’ Jacques sounded relieved. But then it
struck him this meant waiting till next week for the twenty-
five francs he had been counting on, and funds were low.
Smiling, Vanheede went up to the bed. ‘Wasn’t it going
well? What’s it about, your article?’
‘About Fritsch’s book on internationalism.’
‘What’s the trouble . . .?’
‘Well, I can’t make up my mind what to think of it.’
• ‘Of the book?’
‘Of the book — and internationalism.’
Vanheede’s eyebrows, pale to the point of invisibility, knitted.
‘Fritsch,’ Jacques went on, ‘is a doctrinaire. What’s more,
he seems to me to lump together things that are distinct and
of quite different value : the ideas of nationality, of the state,
and of a patria — a fatherland. And that gives one an impres-
sion he’s on the wrong tack, even when he says things that
sound quite sensible.’
Vanheede listened with a slight frown. His eyes were hidden
by the hueless lashes, and the corners of his mouth drooped
in a pout. Backing to the table, he swept to one side some of
the books, files and toilet articles, and perched himself on it.
Jacques went on, in an uncertain tone :
‘For Fritsch and men like him the internationalist ideal
means first of all sweeping away the notion of a fatherland.
Is that necessary, or inevitable? I’m not so sure of it.’
Vanheede raised his doll-like hand.
‘Anyhow patriotism’s got to go. How can one imagine the
revolution cramped within the frontiers of a single country?
The real revolution, ours, is a world-wide affair. It’s got to
be brought off everywhere at once, by all the working-class
majorities throughout the world.’
‘Yes. But don’t you see, you, too, are making a distinction
between patriotism and the feeling that one has a native land.’
Vanheede shook his little head, crowned with a tuft of curly,
almost silver hair, emphatically.
‘No, they’re the same thing, Baulthy. Just see the way the
12
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
nineteenth century went about it. By everywhere exalting
patriotism, the feeling that a man has for his own country and
for no other, it fortified the notion of nationalistic states; it
spread hatred amongst nations and paved the way to war.’
‘Certainly. Yet it wasn’t the patriots but the nationalists of
the nineteenth century who gave a wrong twist to the idea of a
fatherland. For a harmless, sentimental and, to my mind,
quite proper affection, they substituted a cult, an aggressive
fanaticism. There’s no question we should condemn that sort
of nationalism. But need we follow Fritsch in condemning in
the same breath every feeling one has for one’s own country — a
very human, innate, almost physical attachment?’
‘Yes ! To be a true revolutionary one must cut loose from
every attachment; root out of one’s personality . . .’
‘Wait a bit!’ Jacques broke in. ‘You’re thinking of the
thorough-paced revolutionary — the kind you aspire to be.
And you’re losing sight of the normal man, shaped as he is by
nature, by life, by the realities of experience. In any case, is
it really feasible to do away with that sentimental patriotism
of which I spoke? I’m not so sure of it. A man can try his
best to root it out, but he belongs to a certain environment,
he was born with a certain temperament, an ethnical com-
plexion, so to speak. He clings to his customs, to the
mannerisms of the culture which has shaped him. Wherever
he is, he keeps his language. And mind you, that’s a very
important point. I shouldn’t be surprised if the problem of
nationality isn’t, in the last analysis, a question of language.
Wherever he may be, at home or abroad, a man goes on think-
ing in the words and syntax of his country. Just see how it is
here I Look at our friends in Geneva, all these voluntary
expatriates who sincerely believe they’ve shaken off the dust
of their native soil and form a truly international group.
You’ll see them instinctively foregathering, grouping themselves
in little clans — Italian, Russian, Austrian and so on. Tribal,
fraternal — ^yes, patriotic clans! Why even you, Vanheede
cling to your fellow-Belgians !’
The albino gave a start, and his owl-like eyes flashed a
reproachful glance at Jacques, before vanishing once more
13
SUMMER, 1914
behind the long eyelashes. His physical uncomeliness made
the humility of his manner seem still more pronounced. But
his silences served him above all to safeguard his faith, whieh
was stronger than his intellect, and marvellously self-assured
for all his seeming shyness. No one, not even Jaeques, not
even the Pilot, had any real influence over Vanheede.
‘No,’ Jacques continued, ‘a man may expatriate himself,
but he can’t </«patriate himself. And that sort of patriotism
has nothing fundamentally opposed to our ideal of revolu-
tionary internationalism. That’s why I wonder if it isn’t un-
wise to attack, as Fritsch does, such sentiments, which, when all
is said and done, stand for something human and vital in their
way. I even wonder if it wouldn’t be injurious to the coming
race, if they were eliminated.’ He was silent for a few moments ;
when he spoke again, he sounded uncertain, perplexed by
scruples. ‘That’s what I think, yet I daren’t write it. Especially
in a short article on Fritsch’s work. A whole book would be
needed, to make sure of not being misunderstood.’ Again he
fell silent; then suddenly exclaimed: ‘Anyhow, I shan’t write
that book. For, really, I’m not sure of my ground. Human
beings adapt themselves, and perhaps we can’t rule out the
feasibility of “depatriating” man; he might get reconciled to
being country-less.’
Vanheede slipped off the table and took a quick step towards
Jacques, a look of angelic joy transfiguring the face that
normally was blank as a blind man’s.
‘But just think of the compensations he would have !’ he
exclaimed.
Jacques smiled. It was such sudden ecstasies as this that
endeared to him the little Belgian.
‘And now I’m off!’
Still smiling, Jacques watched Vanheede hopping sparrow-
like towards the door, and make a soundless exit with a shy
wave of his tiny hand.
Though it was no longer necessary for him to finish off his
article — perhaps, indeed, for that very reason — he settled
down again to it with zest.
He was still writing when he heard the hall-clock strike
14
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
four. Meynestrel was expecting him. He jumped off the bed.
No sooner was he on his feet than he realized he was famished.
But there would be no time to stop for a meal on the way.
He remembered that in one of his drawers there were two
packets of powdered chocolate which dissolved at once in hot
water, and that he had refilled his spirit-lamp the day before.
Before he had finished washing his face and hands the water
in his little saucepan was at the boil. After gulping down a
cup of scalding-hot chocolate, he hurried out.
3
Sunday^ June 28
JACQ,UES VISITS MEYNESTREL
Meynestrel was living, at a considerable distance
from the Place Grenus, in the Carouge district, a rather dreary
suburb on the banks of the Arve, where many revolutionaries,
mostly Russian refugees, had settled. Wood and coal merchants,
dealers in scrap-iron, coach-builders, parquet-makers, monu-
mental masons — all such as needed elbow-room for their
businesses — had set up in this district of Geneva. Along the
wide streets, sheds and workyards alternated with blocks of
ancient houses, mutilated gardens and building-sites for sale.
The house in which the Pilot lodged was at the corner of
the Quai Charles-Page and the Rue de la Carouge, facing the
Pont Neuf It was a long, three-storey building, flat-fronted,
without balconies, weathered a dingy yellow which, however,
under the summer sun took on the warm tones of Italian
rough-cast. Flights of gulls sped past the windows, wheeling
and swooping down towards the Arve, which here ran swift
and shallow, boisterous as a mountain torrent, flecking with
foam the rocks that jutted just above the surface.
15
SUMMER, 1914
Meynestrel and Alfreda had a two-room flat at the end of a
long passage. The rooms were separated by a narrow hall,
the smaller being used as a kitchen, the larger as their bed-
room and study.
Near the window, in sunlight filtering between the slats of
the drawn Venetian blind, Meynestrel was sitting at a light
table, working as he waited for Jacques to come. In his uneven,
microscopic script, bristling with abbreviations, he was dashing
down on sheets of thin notepaper brief phrases, which it was
Alfreda’s task to decipher and copy on an antiquated type-
writer.
For the moment, however, the Pilot was by himself; Alfreda
had just quitted the low chair close beside Meynestrel’s, on
which she always sat. She had taken advantage of a break in
her master’s work to run to the kitchen, and turn the water
tap on, and was standing by with a carafe to fill when the
water began running cold. An acrid odour of stewed peaches
simmering over a slow fire on the gas stove pervaded the warm
air. They lived almost entirely on milk foods, vegetables and
cooked fruit.
‘Freda!’
She rinsed out the percolator she was holding, stood it to
drain off, and hastily dried her hands.
‘Freda !’
‘Coming !’
She hurried to his side and settled down again on the low chair.
‘Where have you been, little girl?’ Gently Meynestrel patted
the bowed, dusky head beside him. The question called for
no answer. He had put it in an absent-minded tone, without
ceasing to scribble away.
She looked up at him with a smile, her dark eyes glowing
with calm loyalty. The widely dilated pupils conveyed her
yearning to see, to understand, to love whole-heartedly ; yet in
them was not the least spark of curiosity, or of insistence.
She seemed born to watch serenely, to sit and wait. No sooner
did Meynestrel begin, for her benefit, to think aloud (it was
a habit with him) than she turned towards him, seeming to
be listening with her eyes. Sometimes when the thought took
16
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
a subtle turn, a flutter of her lashes showed her appreciation.
All that Meynestrel got from her was this silent, constantly
attentive nearness — but it had now become as necessary to him
as the air he breathed.
She was only twenty-two, fifteen years younger than he.
No one had any clear idea of how they had chanced to meet,
or of the real bond uniting them under the tranquil surface
of their life in common. They had come together to Geneva
during the previous year. Meynestrel was Swiss. Alfreda,
though she never mentioned her family or early years, was
known to hail from South America.
Meynestrel went on scribbling, his slender head, which the
short pointed beard caused to seem longer still, bent above
his task. The light fell full on the narrow forehead, that gave
an impression of being pinched in at the temples. His left
hand was fondling the nape of Alfreda’s neck. Placidly leaning
forward, the girl accepted the caress with the vibrant immo-
bility of a petted cat.
Without shifting his hand Meynestrel stopped writing, gazed
vaguely in front of him, and shook his head thoughtfully.
‘Danton once said, “We want to put on top what is below,
and put below what’s now on top.” That, little girl, is a
politician’s slogan. Not a revolutionary socialist’s. I’m sure
Louis Blanc, Proudhon, Fournier or Marx would never have
said a thing like that.’
She looked up at him. But his eyes were not bent on her.
His face, raised now towards the upper part of the window
where a sunbeam filtered through a chink in the Venetian
blind, was quite expressionless. The features were regular, but
curiously devoid of life. Though not unhealthy, his complexion
was a neutral grey, as if the blood under the skin were colour-
less. Beneath the close-cropped moustache, the lips were of
exactly the same hue as the cheeks. All the man’s vitality
was concentrated in the eyes; small, oddly close-set eyes.
The j'et-black pupils filled the space between the eyelids, the
whites being scarcely visible. Their glow was so intense as to
be hardly bearable, yet no warmth emanated from them.
There was something almost feral in the eyes, deep pools of
17
SUMMER, 1914
light ever unruffled by the least hint of emotion, and in the
look of imperturbable attention which at once captivated and
annoyed its victim. One was reminded of the keen, ruthless,
baffling stare of certain breeds of monkey.
‘Yes, the syllogisms of individualist ideology,’ he muttered
in a breath, as if rounding off an unspoken phrase.
His voice was level, with no force behind it. He almost
always spoke in curt, cryptic phrases, which seemed to shoot
forth from his lips, impelled by a scant but never-failing supply
of breath. His way of uttering such slippery combinations of
big words as ‘syllogisms of individualist ideology’ in a single
breath, yet with every syllable distinct, seemed a feat of
virtuosity like that of the violinist who with one sweep of his
bow releases a cascade of semiquavers.
‘Socialism that takes account of classes,’ he went on, ‘isn’t
true socialism. To turn the social order upside down is merely
to replace one bad thing by another, one oppression by another.
All classes are suffering today. The tyranny of competition,
of capitalist exploitation — in a word, individualism run amok —
presses quite as heavily on the employer of labour. Only, he
doesn’t seem to see that.’ Twice he coughed slightly and
pressed his hand to his chest. A rush of words followed : ‘To
reorganize production and combine all the healthy elements
of the community, without discrimination, in a classless society,
that’s the task before us, little girl.’
Then he fell to writing again.
Meynestrel’s name was linked with the early days of aviation.
As a mechanical engineer and pilot, he had been called on
to join the staff of the S.A.S. when their aircraft factory was
set up at Zurich, and several flying gadgets still in use bore
his name. During that period a series of attempts to fly the
Alps had brought him into the public eye. But a serious
accident in which he all but lost his life, during the Ziirich-
Turin flight, had left him with an injured leg, and he had
been obliged to give up flying. Later, when strikes had broken
out at the S.A.S. factory, he had deliberately abandoned his
post in the company’s office to join in with the workers;
thereafter he had vanished abruptly from Switzerland.
18
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
As to his subsequent movements nothing definite was known.
He may have spent the intervening years in eastern Europe,
for he was well up in Russian problems and, on several
occasions, had displayed a knowledge of Slavonic dialects.
But he was equally well up in Spanish affairs and those of
Asia Minor. One thing was clear : he had been in close touch
with most of the then leaders of the revolutionary movement
in Europe, and still corresponded regularly with several of
them. No one knew in what circumstances or with what obj'ect
he had approached them. He spoke of them in puzzling terms
— a blend of vagueness and precision, and always with reference
to some other topic, to contribute a piece of timely information
when generalities were being discussed. On the occasions when
he quoted some characteristic remark that presumably he had
heard, or described an event which seemingly he had wit-
nessed, he never troubled to explain his share in the interview
or incident. His allusions were always casual; whether he
spoke of facts, political theories or personalities, he always
sounded well-informed and earnest, but whenever his personal
experience was mooted he turned it off, sometimes with aj'oke.
The fact remains that he gave an impression of having
always been on the spot when something memorable was
happening, or, anyhow, of knowing better than anyone else
exactly what took place on that particular occasion. Moreover
he seemed to have witnessed each such event from a special
angle, enabling him to draw conclusions from it as cogent as
they were surprising.
Asked one day why he had come to Geneva, he had replied,
‘To have some peace.’ During his first months in that city,
he had kept severely to himself, avoiding alike refugees and
Swiss members of the ‘Party’ — with Alfreda as his sole com-
panion. Meanwhile he read widely, and analysed the text-
books of the great revolutionaries — with the obj'ect apparently
of mastering the tactics of revolution.
Then one day Richardley, a young Genevan militant, had
persuaded him to come to ‘Headquarters,’ the nightly meeting-
place of a mixed group of Swiss and foreign revolutionaries.
It would have been hard to say if he really liked the group ;
19
SUMMER, 1914
he had never expressed an opinion on the subject. Still he
came there again, of his own accord, on the next evening.
And very soon his striking personality had made itself appre-
ciated. In that fraternity of theorists, obliged for the time
being to content themselves with words, instead of deeds, the
shrewdness of Meynestrel’s critical judgments, his unfailing
competence — ^which seemed the outcome rather of experience
than of mere study or research — his instinct for bringing each
problem down to the level of hard facts, and always giving
revolutionary theory a practical twist, his gift for laying his
finger on the crucial point of the most tangled social problems
and summing it up in a few pithy sentences — all these qualities
had given him a unique prestige among his associates at
‘Headquarters.’ Within a few months he had become the focus,
the driving force of the group; some would have said ‘the
Leader.’
Daily he came there, but the mystery in which he wrapped
himself remained impervious; the enigma of a man who is
taking his bearings, holding himself in, biding his time.
‘Come in here,’ Alfreda said, and showed Jacques into the
kitchen. ‘He’s working.’
Jacques mopped his perspiring brow.
‘A glass of water?’ she suggested, pointing to the carafe
standing in the sink under a trickle of cold water from the tap.
‘Rather !’
The glass she filled became misted at once. With the carafe
in her hand she stood before him in that attitude of humble
service which was so characteristic of her. Her sallow, lightly
powdered complexion, her snub nose, the childish mouth that
swelled like a ripe strawberry when she closed her lips, her
eyes slightly drawn up towards the temples, and the black,
stiff, lustrous fringe that draped her forehead almost to the
eyebrows, gave her the look of a Japanese doll made in Europe.
Perhaps, Jacques mused, that blue kimono adds to the effect.
And, as he drank the water, Pat’s question came back to his
mind. Was Alfreda happy with her ‘Pilot’? He had to confess
he hardly knew her, though she was always present at his
talks with Meynestrel. He had got into the way of regarding
20
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
her less as a living being than a domestic adjunct — more
precisely an apanage of Meynestrel. For the first time he grew
conscious of the slight constraint he always felt when alone
with Alfreda.
‘Another glass?’
‘Thanks very much.’
That cup of chocolate had made him thirsty. It struck him
that he had had no lunch, that it was absurd the way he
played fast and loose with his meals. Suddenly a fantastic
question crossed his mind: ‘Did I put out my spirit-lamp?’
Rack his memory as he might, nothing definite was forth-
coming.
The Pilot’s voice echoed across the little flat.
‘Freda!’
‘Coming 1’
Smiling, her eyes twinkling with amusement, she shot a
meaning glance at Jacques, that seemed to say: ‘You see
what a spoilt child my “Pilot” is!’
‘Come with me,’ she said.
They found Meynestrel standing, outlined against the light,
at the window. He had raised the blind a little and sunlight
fell on the large, low bed, bare walls and the table on which
lay only a fountain-pen and a little mound of note-paper.
In his grey pyjamas Meynestrel seemed tall. He was sparely
built and rather narrow-chested, and his shoulders had a slight
droop. His keen eyes bored into Jacques’ as he held out his
hand.
‘Sorry to drag you all this way, but we’ll be quieter here
than at the “Talking Shop” . . . Here’s some work for you,
little girl,’ he added, handing Alfreda a book with a marker
showing the place.
Docilely she took her typewriter, squatted on the floor with
her back against the bed and began strumming the keys.
As Meynestrel and Jacques sat down at the table, an anxious
look settled on the Pilot’s face. Leaning back in his chair, he
stretched his right leg straight in front of him. His flying
accident had left a stiffness in the knee which gave him some-
times a slight limp.
21
SUMMER, 1914
‘Here’s a nasty business!’ he began. ‘Some “person un-
known” has sent me a letter. There are two men, it seems,
whom we should beware of. Firstly, Guittberg.’
‘What! Guittberg?’ Jacques exclaimed.
‘Secondly, Tobler.’
Jacques made no movement.
‘Does that surprise you?’ the Pilot asked.
‘About Guittberg — yes.’
‘Here’s the letter.’ Meynestrel took an envelope from his
pyjama pocket. ‘Read it !’
‘Hm,’ Jacques murmured after composedly perusing the
letter, a long, methodical indictment — unsigned.
‘You know the important part played by Guittberg and
Tobler in the Croatian movement. They’ll be coming to
Vienna, for the Congress. So we must ascertain how far they’re
to be trusted. I don’t want to pass the word round before
making sure.’
‘Yes,’ Jacques said. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask
‘What do you propose to do?’ but he refrained. Though he
was on easy terms with Meynestrel, instinct warned him not
to go beyond a certain point.
As if he had expected the question, Meynestrel went on.
‘Firstly’ — he had a hobby, that was almost a mania, for
making himself clear, and often began his phrases with a crisp,
emphatic ‘Firstly,’ not invariably followed by a ‘Secondly’ —
‘Firstly, there’s only one way of getting at the truth, and
that’s to make investigations on the spot. At Vienna. A discreet
enquiry, made by someone who doesn’t attract attention. Pre-
ferably someone whose name isn’t on the rolls of any party.
But’ — his gaze settled fixedly on Jacques — ‘someone we can
trust. I mean, someone whose common sense we can rely on.’
‘Yes.’ Jacques was surprised, and secretly flattered. Promptly
came the not unpleasant after-thought: ‘No more sittings for
Pat. Hard luck on him, but it can’t be helped !’ Then, for the
second time, his thoughts harked back to the spirit-lamp.
In the ensuing silence the only sounds were the clicking of
the typewriter and, like the murmur of a distant stream, the
trickle of the water overflowing from the carafe into the sink.
22
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
‘Will you undertake it?’ Meynestrel asked.
Jacques’ answer was a quick nod.
‘You must leave in two days. Time enough to get together
the relevant documents. And stay as long as is needed in
Vienna. A fortnight, if necessary.’
Alfreda shot a quick upward glance at Jacques, who gave
another nod ; then she bent over her work again.
‘At Vienna,’ Meynestrel went on, ‘you’ll have Hosmer’s
help.’ He stopped abruptly; there had been a knock at the
front door. ‘Go and see, little girl.’ He turned to Jacques
again. ‘Hosmer should know something about it.’
Hosmer, an Austrian living at Vienna, was a friend of Mey-
nestrel’s. Jacques had met him a year before at Lausanne,
where Hosmer had stayed a few days. The encounter had left
a deep impression on him. It was the first time he had come
across that type of revolutionary — hard-bitten, cynical, with-
out scruples as to the means employed, and interested only in
results, prepared quite shamelessly to sail under false colours
when occasion called for it, provided that expedient served,
in however small degree, the revolutionary cause.
Alfreda came back. ‘It’s Mithoerg.’
Meynestrel turned to Jacques, and said in a low voice,
‘We’ll go into it together this evening at the Talking Shop,’
adding in a louder tone : ‘Come in, Mithoerg.’
Mithoerg wore large round glasses which, looming below
the half-moons of his heavy eyebrows, gave him a permanently
startled air. His face was plump and rather flabby; with the
puffy cheeks of a man who has not been able to sleep off the
effects of a convivial night.
Meynestrel had risen from his seat.
‘What brings you here, Mithoerg?’
Mithoerg’ s gaze swept the room, resting in turn on the
Pilot, then on Jacques, then on Alfreda.
‘I come to say that old Janotte, he’s come to Headquarters,’
he explained laboriously. He was never quite at ease in any
language but his own, which was German.
No, Jacques was thinking. I can’t be sure if I blew that
lamp out. After filUng my cup, I may have put back the
23
SUMMER, 1914
saucepan on the lamp, and left it burning. I drank my choco-
late and went out. Yes, it may have been still alight then. . . .
He stared at the others, without speaking.
‘Janotte particularly wanted to see you before his lecture
to-night,’ Mithoerg was saying. ‘But he’s so worn by the
journey. Heat always lays him down.’
‘Too much mane !’ Alfreda chuckled to herself.
‘So he’s gone off for a little nap. But he asked me to bring
you his best greeting.’
‘That was very, very nice of him,’ Meynestrel’s voice rose
to an unexpected falsetto. ‘Only, Mithoerg, my boy, we don’t
give a tinker’s damn for your friend Janotte. Do we, little
girl?’ While speaking, he had rested his arm on Alfreda’s
shoulder, and was stroking her hair.
‘Do you know him?’ Alfreda cast a mischievous glance in
Jacques’ direction.
Jacques did not hear. He was vainly groping in his memory
for some reassuring detail. He was fairly sure of having placed
the saucepan on the floor. In which case he must have blown
out the flame and replaced the cap. Had he, though . . .?
‘He has a mane like an old lion,’ Alfreda laughed. ‘He’s
a leader of the anti-clericals and, to look at him, you’d take
him for a cathedral organist.’
‘Ssh, little girl,’ Meynestrel scolded indulgently.
Taken aback, Mithoerg gave a sickly smile. His bristling
shock of hair made him seem always on the brink of flying
into a rage — as indeed he was extremely apt to do.
He was an Austrian by birth. Five years earlier, to escape
his period of military service, he had fled from Salzburg,
where he was studying chemistry. He had settled down in
Switzerland, first at Lausanne, then at Geneva, had there
completed his course of studies, and was now working four
days a week in a laboratory. But he was more interested in
sociology than in chemistry. Gifted with a prodigious memory,
he had read everything and forgotten nothing, and each detail
was neatly pigeon-holed in his square head. His friends,
especially Meynestrel, consulted him as they would consult
an Encyclopedia. He was an exponent of the school of violence,
24
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
yet the man himself was soft-hearted, sentimental, timid and
unhappy.
‘Janotte, he has trotted this lecture of his all round the
continent.’ His tone was bland, unruffled. ‘A great authority
is he on European affairs. Just now he comes from Milano.
Two days he spent in Austria, with Trotsky. He has some
curious stories to tell. It’s our plan to get him to come round
to the Landolt Cafe, after the lecture, and start him telling
them. You will come, won’t you?’ He glanced at Meynestrel,
then at Alfreda. ‘What for you, Jacques?’ he added, turning to
the young man.
‘Yes,’ Jacques said, ‘I may drop in at the Landolt. But the
lecture — no !’ His obsession had rattled his nerves and though
he had long discarded any religious belief, the anti-clerical
attitude in others almost always irritated him. ‘There’s some-
thing childishly aggressive in the mere title of the lecture.
“Disproofs of God’s existence.” ’ He took from his pocket a
green handbill. ‘You’ve only to look at his manifesto !’ he
exclaimed with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.
‘Listen ! I propose to submit to you a theory of the Universe, which
definitely rules out all recourse to the theory of a Divine Purposed
‘It’s easy to make j’okes of his style,’ Mithoerg broke in,
rolling his eyes indignantly. When he became excited his
salivary glands secreted copiously, and he seemed to hiss the
words out. ‘I quite agree these things might be better put,
from a philosophic viewpoint. But I don’t think it useless to
resay them, again and again. For truly it is by superstition
that the clergy for years and years have kept their hold on
men. Without religion, men would not have so long been
putting up with poverty. They would have revolted long, long
ago. And freed themselves.’
‘Very likely,’ Jacques admitted, as he rolled the leaflet into
a ball and tossed it gaily through a chink in the blind. ‘And
it’s quite likely that a harangue on those lines will get as
much applause here as at Vienna or Milan. What’s more, I
realize there’s something rather touching in all this eagerness
to understand, to clear the mind of cobwebs, which brings
hundreds of men and women together, in a hot, stuffy room,
25
SUMMER, 1914
reeking with smoke — when they’d be ever so much better off
sitting on the bank of the lake, looking up at the stars. But
personally I simply can’t face it — spending my evening listening
to that stuff.’
On the last words his voice had suddenly faltered ; he had
just pictured the papers on his table writhing as they caught
alight, the window-curtains going up in flames — so vividly
that his breath failed him. Meynestrel, Alfreda, even Mithoerg
— not a particularly observant man — stared at him in surprise.
‘I’m off. Au revokt he said curtly.
‘Aren’t you coming with us to Headquarters?’ Meynestrel
asked.
‘Got to go home first!’ He jerked the words out over his
shoulder.
In the Rue de Carouge he broke into a run. At Plaimpalais
Circus a tram was pulling out ; he jumped on to it. But when
it halted at the quay, impatience got the better of him ; hastily
alighting, he made for the bridge at the double.
Not till he was coming out of the Rue des Etuves and a
familiar scene lay before him — the little square with the urinal
in its midst, and in a corner the Globe Hotel, placid as ever —
did his panic terror vanish as if by magic.
‘What a fool I am !’ he thought.
Now it came back to him that he had replaced the brass
extinguisher on the wick, had even burned his fingers doing so.
He still could feel the ball of his' thumb smarting, and glancing
at it, saw the mark of the burn. And now his memory was so
precise, so unquestionable, that he did not even trouble to
climb the three flights of stairs to verify it. Turning on his
heel, he walked back towards the Rhone.
From the bridge he saw the old town serenely rising tier
by tier from a green mass of foliage on the water’s edge up
to the Saint-Pierre spires fretting the blue immensity of the
Alps. ‘What a fool I was!’ he murmured once more. The
disproportion between the trivial incident and the anxiety it
had caused him passed his understanding. It was not the first
time, either, that he had thus been plagued by his imagination.
‘How is it,’ he wondered, ‘that at such moments I lose so
26
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
Utterly all control of myself? The way I can give in to anxiety
is fantastic, positively morbid. And not only to anxiety, to
scruples as well . .
Panting, perspiring, he climbed with halting steps and
unseeing eyes the little streets he knew so well : dark, cool
alleys — lined with old houses and small timbered shops, broken
by flights of steps and terraces — that wound their upward way
to the City proper.
He had entered the Rue Calvin, without noticing where he
was going. A sombre, solemn street well suited to its name, it
followed the crest-line of the slope. The rows of stately grey-
stone houses, the austere lives that were presumably being led
behind those lofty windows — all contributed to an impression
of Puritanism at its wealthiest, and gloomiest. But at the far
end of this bleak vista, with a saving grace, rose the pillars and
fagade of the Place Saint-Pierre, gay with sunlight and the
verdure of its immemorial lime-trees.
4
Sunday, June 28
THE GENEVA GROUP OF INTERNATIONALISTS
‘It’s Sunday,’ Jacques said to himself, observing the crowd
of women and children in the Cathedral Square. ‘Sunday,
June the twenty-eighth. This Austrian enquiry may well last
ten days or a fortnight; and there’s heaps remaining to be
done before the Congress. . . .’
Like all his comrades in that summer of ’14, he had high
hopes of the resolutions touching the major problems of the
27
SUMMER, 1914
Socialist International, that would be passed at the Vienna
Socialist Congress called for August 23rd.
He looked forward to the special mission on which the Pilot
had despatched him. Jacques liked activity; it enabled him
to think well of himself without remorse. Moreover he was
not sorry to get away for some days from the perpetual con-
fabulations and parlour politics of Geneva.
While he was there he could not refrain from going prac-
tically every evening to ‘Headquarters.’ Sometimes he merely
dropped in, shook hands with some friends and left at once.
On other occasions after drifting from group fo group he
retired to the back room with Meynestrel. Those he esteemed
his lucky evenings ; brief, cherished hours of an intimacy that
made him greatly envied. For men who had to their credit a
fighting record, who had ‘done their bit’ on the revolutionary
front, could not understand why the Pilot preferred Jacques’
company to theirs.
Usually, however, he stayed amongst his friends, silent,
somewhat aloof and rarely taking part in their discussions.
On the occasions when he did take part he displayed a breadth
of view, a desire for mutual understanding and conciliation,
and a mental outlook which promptly gave an unwonted turn
to the conversation.
In that little cosmopolitan circle, as in all similar circles, he
encountered two types of revolutionary: the ‘apostles’ and the
‘experts.’
Temperamentally he was drawn to men of the former type —
whether socialists, communists or anarchists. Spontaneously
he felt at home with these generous-minded mystics, whose
revolt had the same origin as his : an innate revulsion from
injustice. All dreamed, as he dreamed, of building on the
ruins of the contemporary world a new world of social justice.
Their visions of the future might differ in detail, but they
shared in the same hope, the hope of a new order, of liberty,
equality and fraternity, of peace. Like Jacques — and it was
particularly this that drew him to them — they were scrupulously
loyal to an inner standard of nobility ; their aspirations towards
a grandiose ideal urged them heroically to surpass themselves.
28
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
In the last analysis, the revolutionary cause appealed to them
because, like Jacques, they found in it a splendid stimulus for
living. Thus they remained at heart individualists, though they
had pledged their lives to the triumph of a collective ideal ; and
though they might not suspect it, what they most enjoyed in
that heady atmosphere of hope and conflict was that each
could feel his individual energies and potentialities multiplied
a hundredfold, and his personality set free to fulfil itself in the
service of a movement infinitely greater than himself.
But his preference for the idealists did not blind Jacques to
the fact that, were they left to their sole enthusiasm, they
might have gone on agitating indefinitely, without ever making
good. The active element, the leaven of the revolutionary
movement, was a skilled minority, the ‘experts.’ It was they
who formulated specific grievances, and achieved tangible
results. Their revolutionary technique, already ample, was
being constantly implemented by new experience. They applied
their fanaticism to limited ends, graded in the order of their
urgency; realistic, not visionary ends. In the atmosphere of
high idealism promoted by the ‘apostles,’ these experts gave
practical expression to their faith.
Jacques felt that he did not really fit into either of these
categories. Obviously he had more in common with the
‘apostles’ ; yet his lucidity of mind, or, anyhow, his knack of
drawing clear distinctions, his shrewd insight into personalities,
situations and the bearing of events, might well, had he
applied himself, have qualified him for ‘expert’ work. Indeed,
given favourable conditions, he might have blossomed out into
a leader. Was it not that capacity for combining the expert’s
political gumption with the mystical zeal of the apostle that
characterized the revolutionary leaders? He had met some of
them and found in all a twofold competence : efficiency — or
more precisely, an outlook on realities so far-ranging and at
the same time so shrewd that, in any givdh emergency, they
could point out at once what steps to take to cope with the
situation and control its trend; and, secondly, a personal
ascendancy, a magnetic power enabling them automatically to
influence other men and, it would almost seem, events as well.
29
SUMMER, 1914
Jacques lacked neither clear-sightedness nor authority; what
is more, he had a quite exceptional gift for winning the affection
and approval of others. If he had never tried to exploit these
qualities, it was because, with very rare exceptions, he felt an
instinctive distaste for meddling with the course of others’ lives.
He often mused on the peculiarity of his position in this
Genevan group; it struck him as very different according as
he viewed it in relation to the group collectively, or in relation
to individuals.
As regards the collectivity his attitude was usually passive.
Not passive, however, in the sense that he stood aside from
their activities. That, indeed, was what surprised him most.
By the force of circumstances he had been led to play a part,
a rather thankless part : that of explaining and justifying cer-
tain values, certain cultural acquisitions and forms of art and
life, which all around him labelled ‘‘bourgeois' and condemned
as such off-hand. Though no less convinced than his com-
panions that the bourgeoisie had outlived its vocation in world-
history, he could not bring himself to endorse the systematic,
wholesale destruction of that bourgeois culture with which
he felt he was still deeply penetrated. To the defence of what
was best and most enduring in it, he applied a sort of aristo-
cratic, typically French intellectualism that, much as the
others resented it, sometimes brought them round, if not to
revise their opinions, at least to recast them in a less intolerant
form. Perhaps, too, they felt, more or less consciously, a certain
satisfaction at having in their ranks, sharing whole-heartedly
in their social ideal, a deserter from the upper middle class.
Moreover, the very fact of his being with them was as it were
a testimony — given by the very world that they were bent on
overthrowing — to their theories of the supreme necessity of
revolution.
In his relations with individuals, taken separately, Jacques’
influence was much more noticeable. At first he had encoun-
tered a slight mistrust, but soon he had established a definite
moral ascendency — ^naturally over the best members of the
group. Behind his reticence, behind the distinction of his
modes of thought and conduct, they discovered a very human
30
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
warm-heartedness which melted their reserve and fired their
confidence. Nor did they treat Jacques quite as they treated
eafch other — as a mere fellow-member of their team. They
brought to their contacts with him a touch of intimacy, of
affection, and made known to him their difficulties and
doubts. There were evenings when one or other would un-
bosom himself to Jacqfies of his best guarded secrets: his
egoism, his failings and his moral lapses. In his company they
came to a keener understanding of themselves, and gained a
new lease of energy. They asked his advice as if he had dis-
covered that key to the problems of man’s inner life for which
he had himself been seeking everywhere all his life through.
And in so doing, without suspecting it, they imposed on him
a painful self-constraint; by lending his personality and words
a greater significance than he would have wished, they obliged
him to keep a constant watch over himself, to refrain from
speaking out or betraying his perplexities and discouragements.
The responsibility thus forced upon him kept him cruelly
to himself, plunging h’m in an isolation that often made him
feel quite desperate. ‘Why,’ he asked himself, ‘is this un-
deserved prestige foisted on me?’ One of Antoine’s pet ideas
came to his mind. ‘We’re Thibaults and there’s something
about us Thibaults that compels respect.’ But it was easy for
him to shake off the toils of pride; for he was far too well
aware of his own weaknesses to imagine that any mysterious
force could emanate from him.
5
Sunday^ June 28
A GATHERING AT ‘HEADQUARTERS’
The ‘Headquarters,’ or ‘Talking Shop’ asMeynestrel’s intimates
usually called it, was discreetly located in the heart of the upper
city, in the old Rue des Barri^res flanking the Cathedral.
31
SUMMER, 1914
Seen from outside, the building gave the impression of being
disused. It was one of several ramshackle old houses that had
somehow survived in that decorous quarter of the town. The
front, three stories high, was plastered a dingy pink; the
wall was crannied, pocked with damp-rot, and the dusty,
shutterless sash-windows suggested an abandoned tenement-
house. Between it and the street ^as a narrow, walled-in
front yard, littered with refuse, scrap-iron, and rubble, amongst
which a large elder-tree rose in solitary grace. The entrance-
gate had vanished, and a band of metal linked the two stone
pillars, bearing in still legible characters the inscription :
‘Brass Foundry.’ The foundry had long since been transferred
elsewhere, but the premises were still being used as a dump
by its proprietors.
Behind the empty house, there was a second yard, invisible
from the street, in which stood the two-storey building that
was known as Headquarters. The only access to it was through
a long, vaulted corridor crossing the ex-foundry from end to
end. The ground-floor had been used as stabling in earlier
days and in it Monier, the handyman, now lived. The upper
floor consisted of four adjacent rooms opening on a long,
dark passage. The smallest of the rooms, at the end of the
passage, had been, at the suggestion of Alfreda, set apart as
a sort of private office for the Pilot. The others, which were
fairly spacious, served as common rooms. In each were ten or
a dozen chairs, some benches, and tables strewn with news-
papers and magazines. For at Headquarters was available not
only the whole socialist press of Europe but also the majority
of these sporadic revolutionary periodicals which, after several
successive issues to bring themselves to notice, lapsed into an
eclipse that lasted anything from a few months to years,
because funds had run out or their staff was languishing
in jail.
No sooner had Jacques emerged from the cloister-like
corridor and entered the backyard than a buzz of heated
conversation on the upper floor apprised him that the Talking
Shop had a full house that evening.
At the foot of the staircase three men were carrying on an
32
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
animated discussion in what sounded vaguely like Italian or
Spanish. They were three enthusiastic Esperantists, one of
whom, Charpentier, a teacher at Lausanne — he had come to
Geneva to hear Janotte’s speech — was the editor of a review
that had some success in revolutionary circles, U Esperantiste
du Leman. He never missed an opportunity of declaring that
one of the most crying needs of the internationalists was a
universal tongue, and that the adoption of Esperanto as a
second language by men of every nationality would simplify
intercourse between the peoples on the intellectual plane no
less than on the material. He was fond of invoking the high
authority of Descartes who in a letter to a friend explicitly
preconized a ‘universal language, very easy to learn, to speak
and to write, and apt — this being the most important thing —
to aid the understanding.’
After shaking hands with the Esperantists Jacques went up
the stairs. On the landing he found Monier on his knees, busy
sorting out on the floor a pile of numbers of Vorwdrts. Monier
was a professional waiter, but though he always wore, in
season and out, the low-cut waistcoat and celluloid dicky
that became his calling, he rarely followed it. The utmost he
did was, for one week every month, to work as an extra hand
at a beer-house, thus ensuring three weeks’ leisure all of which
he devoted to the ‘Revolutionary Cause.’ He displayed an
equal zeal for all and sundry tasks — running errands, cleaning
up, sorting out periodicals, and cyclostyling copies.
The door of the room at the top of the stairs stood open.
Alfreda and Paterson were by themselves talking near the
window. Jacques had already observed that, when she was
with the Englishman, Alfreda seemed to drop her usual role
of silent onlooker, and blossom out into a young woman with
a mind of her own — an aspect of her that, presumably out of
shyness, she never revealed in other circumstances. She had
Meynestrel’s attache-case under her arm and in her hand a
pamphlet, a passage from which she was reading out in a low
tone to Paterson. Puffing at his pipe, the young man seemed
to be listening absent-mindedly. His eyes were studying the
bent face with the jet-black fringe, and the pale cheeks on
33
c
SUMMER, 1914
which the long lashes cast wavering shadows; he was won-
dering, perhaps, how the curious dull sheen of that white
skin could be realized on canvas. Neither of them noticed
Jacques walking past the door.
In the second room he saw a number of familiar faces.
Old Boissonis was sitting near the door, his fat paunch sagging
over his thighs. Near him stood Mithoerg, Guerin and Char-
covsky, the bookseller.
Boissonis shook Jacques’ hand, without interrupting a
rejoinder he was making.
‘But, in that case . . . Well, what does it prove? The
same old story: not enough driving force behind the revolu-
tionary movement. And why? They don’t think enough.’ He
threw himself back in his chair, his hands splayed on his
knees, and grinned aggressively.
Daily he was one of the first-comers. Discussion was the
breath of life to him. Sometime a Professor of Natural Science
at the Bordeaux University, he had been led on from anthro-
pology to sociological research, and, the boldness of his views
having got him in bad odour at the University, he had moved
to Geneva. What caught the eye in his appearance was the
disproportion between his tiny features and his enormous
head. The vast, bald, dome-shaped forehead, the heavy jowl
and several layers of chin formed a zone of superfluous fat
which seemed to dwarf preposterously all the rest: the eyes
sparkling with mischievous good-nature; a snub, inquisitive
nose with large, gaping nostrils; and fleshy lips always in
readiness to smile. All the fat man’s vitality seemed concen-
trated in the small oasis of eyes, nose and mouth, lost in a
Sahara of gross flesh.
‘I’ve said it before, and I say it again,’ he oracled, licking
his plump lips, ‘we’ve got to launch our attack, to start with,
on the philosophic front.’
Mithoerg rolled disapproving eyes behind his glasses, and
shook his shaggy mane,
‘Thought and action must march hand in hand.’
‘Look at what happened in Germany, in the nineteenth
century,’ Charcovsky began.
34
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
Old Boissonis slapped his thighs.
‘That’s just it !’ he cried, chuckling already with the satis-
faction of having made his point. ‘Yes, let us take the case of
the Germans . . .’
Jacques knew in advance everything they were going to
say; the only variations would be in the way they bandied
arguments and counter-arguments, like pawns on a chess-
board.
Standing in the middle of the room, Zelavsky, Perinet,
Saffrio and Skada formed an animated quartet. Jacques went
up to them.
‘Everything hangs together, everything fits in so perfectly,
in the capitalist system,’ Zelavsky, a Russian with a long
flaxen moustache, was declaring.
‘And zat is vy ve only need to vait, Sergei Pavlovitch,’ put
in Skada, sharply enunciating each word in a tone pitched
deliberately low. ‘Ze bourgeois vorld vill of its own accord
crumple into pieces.’
Skada, the Levantine Jew, was a man in the early fifties.
He was extremely short-sighted and glasses thick as telescope
lenses straddled the hooked, putty-coloured nose. The face
was an ugly one, with short, fuzzy hair closely plastered over
the egg-shaped skull and enormous ears; but the thoughtful
eyes glowed with an infinite kindliness. Skada led an ascetic
life. Meynestrel had nicknamed him ‘The Pundit.’
‘How’s yourself?’ a gruff bass voice enquired, and a sledge-
hammer hand crashed on Jacques’ shoulder. ‘Hot as hell,
ain’t it?’
Quilleuf, who had Just come in, walked round the room,
slapping backs and shaking hands with his hearty ‘How’s
yourself?’ He never waited for an answer, and in winter as in
summer, invariably followed up with a ‘Hot as hell, ain’t it?’
Nothing short of a raging blizzard could make him change
the formula.
‘It may take time to crumple,’ Skada went on ; ‘but crumple
it must one day — ^in-ev-it-ably. Zat’s vy one can die without
regrets.’ His flabby eyelids dropped and a quiet smile that
vouched for his serene confidence in the future, set the long.
35
SUMMER, 1914
plump lips slowly writhing across each other, like two tangled
snakes.
Jean Perinet greeted the Pundit’s speech with a series of
little, emphatic nods.
‘Yes, time’s on our side. Everywhere. Even in France.’
Perinet had a rapid, high-pitched voice with ringing tones,
and a way of saying everything that crossed his mind with
artless unconcern. His broad Paris accent struck an amusing
note in these international confabulations. He looked twenty-
eight or thirty, a typical young workman from the Parisian
suburbs, with alert eyes, the ghost of a moustache, a quizzical
nose and a general air of health and cleanliness. The son of a
Paris furniture-maker, he had got into trouble over a woman
and run away from home when little more than a boy. He
had known hard luck, frequented anarchist circles and done
time in jail. When, as the sequel to a street affray, the Lyons
police were on his tracks, he had crossed the frontier. Jacques
greatly liked him. The non-French members of the group,
however, tended to keep him at arm’s length; they were put
off by his ever-ready laugh, his caustic wit, and, most of all,
by his regrettable habit of naming his friends in terms of their
national fare: the ‘Macaronis,’ the ‘German Sausages,’ the
‘Ros-bifs’ and so forth. He meant no harm by it, and himself
had taken no offence hearing an Englishman refer to him
as ‘the Froggie.’
He turned to Jacques, as if calling him to witness.
‘In France, even in big business circles, the new generation’s
tumbled to it. They bloody well know, in their heart of hearts,
that the game is up, they won’t be able to live on the backs of
the workers much longer. That one of these fine days the land
and mines and factories and railways, the whole bag of tricks,
has got to come back to the workers. The younger ones, any-
how, know it. Ain’t that so, Thibault?’
Zelavsky and Skada spun quickly round and fixed keenly
questioning eyes on Jacques, as if the point were one of extreme
urgency, and they were only waiting for Jacques’ reply, before
making some momentous decision. Jacques smiled. True, he
attached no less importance than they did to every symptom
36
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
of impending social upheaval, but he was less convinced than
they of the utility of such conversations.
‘That’s so,’ he agreed. ‘Many young Frenchmen of the
middle class, I imagine, have developed secret doubts of the
future of capitalism. The capitalist system still keeps their
pockets lined, and they hope it will last out their lifetime.
Still they’re beginning to feel uneasy. Only, that’s all. It’s a
mistake to jump to the conclusion that they’re on the point of
deserting their class. On the contrary, I expect they’ll put up
a very stiff fight for their privileges — and they’re still devilishly
well entrenched. For one thing they have, oddly enough, to help
them, the tacit consent of the poor devils whom they exploit.’
‘And don’t forget,’ Perinet put in, ‘that they keep all the
top jobs to their ruddy selves, they run the show.’
‘Not only,’ Jacques observed, ‘do they run it but, for the time
being, one might say they have a sort of right to run it. For,
after all, where could we find . . .?’
A sudden bellow from Quilleuf interrupted him. ^Memories
oj a Proletarian! Ha! Hal’ At the far end of the room
Quilleuf was standing beside the table on which Charcovsky,
the bookseller — who held the post of librarian — laid out each
evening the new books, magazines and newspapers that had
just come in. All that could be seen of Quilleuf was his bent
back and big shoulders quaking in a vast guffaw.
Jacques completed his remark. ‘Where could we find, at a
moment’s notice, men with enough expert knowledge to take
their place? Why are you laughing, Sergei?’
For some moments Zelavsky had been contemplating Jacques
with a look of mingled amusement and affection.
‘In every Frenchman,’ he said, wagging his head, ‘dwells a
sceptic who never sleeps but with one eye open.’
Quilleuf had swung round abruptly. After a hasty glance at
the other groups, he marched straight on Jacques, brandishing
a book he had picked up from the table.
^Emile Pouchard. Memories of a Proletarian Childhood. What
d’you make of this, eh lads?’ Guffawing, rolling his eyes, and
thrusting forward his plump, jovial face to peer at each in
turn, he comically overdid his fury for their entertainment.
SUMMER, 1914
‘Here’s another of these half-baked “comrades,” some
wretched whipper-snapper with his precious problems ! Some
dud quill-driver who dumps his garbage on the workers’
door-steps !’
Quilleuf, hailed by his friends as ‘Tribune’ — alternatively,
‘Cobbler’ — came from the South of France. After many years
at sea in the Merchant Service, and spells of multifarious work
in Mediterranean ports, this rolling stone had fetched up at
Geneva. His little bootshop was always thronged with workless
mihtants who found there, after closing time at Headquarters,
a fire in winter, soft drinks in summer and at all times tobacco
and good company.
There was a pleasant magic — which instinctively he turned
to excellent account — in his melodious southern voice. Some-
times at public meetings, after fidgeting in his seat for a couple
of hours, he would rush on to the platform and, though he had
nothing new to put forward and merely clad the arguments
of previous speakers in the glamour of his tempestuous elo-
quence, in a few phrases he had carried his hearers with him
and persuaded them to vote for measures for which the
cleverest orators had so far failed to get a majority. The
trouble was, once the flood-gates were opened, to dam this
spate of eloquence ; for the release of his pent-up enthusiasm,
and the sense of power that, radiating from his personality,
swept his audience off their feet — not to say the sound of his
own voice — gave him a physical pleasure so intense that he
could never have enough of it.
Now he was fluttering the pages of the Memories, scanning
the chapter headings, and sliding his fat forefinger under
certain passages, like a child spelling out the words.
‘ “The joys of family life !” “The charm of home !” Oh, the
son of a bitch !’
He shut the book, and with the neat precision of an expert
on the bowling green, flexing his knees and swinging his arms,
pitched it across the room on to the table.
‘Look here!’ He turned to Jacques again. ‘I don’t
see why I shouldn’t write my memoirs, too. Don’t I know
all about “the joys of family life” ! And I’ve plenty of
38
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
memories of childhood, and to spare, for those who
haven’t any!’
Drawn by the stentorian voice, others were strolling up to
join the group around the Tribune, whose yarns always
brought a gust of breezy realism into the rather academic
atmosphere of these gatherings.
Half-closing his eyes, he cast a swift glance round his public ;
then began adroitly in a low, confidential tone.
‘Everyone here knows the Old Town at Marseilles, don’t
they? Well, that’s where we lived, the six of us, at the end of
a blind alley. In two rooms which put together made about
half the size of this one. One of ’em hadn’t no window. My
dad had to get up by candlehght every morning, before the
sun rose, and bitter cold it was. He’d haul me out of the heap
of old rags where I slept with my brothers ; seems he couldn’t
bear to see anyone else taking it easy while he was up and
about. Every night he’d roll up very late, half drunk, after
a god-awful day loading barrels on the quays, poor devil. Ma
was always ailing and wondering how to make both ends
meet. Ma was as scared of him as we were. She, too, was out
all day — doing chores, most likely, down in the town. As I’d
the honour to be the first-born of the bunch, I had to keep
the three other kids in order. And didn’t I wallop it into
them, seeing as how they got on my nerves, puling and mewling
and snuffling and scrapping all the time. Nary a hot stew for
us kids ; a hunk of bread, an onion and a dozen olives was
all that came our way, with a rasher thrown in once in a blue
moon. Never a square meal, never a kind word, never a lark,
never a bloody thing! From morn till night we mouched
about the streets, fighting like wildcats when we’d spotted a
rotten orange in the gutter. Or we’d go and sniff the shells
the lucky ones who were tucking into sea-urchins chucked
down on the pavements. At thirteen we’d started in with
little girls, in the waste lots behind the hoardings. My “Joys
'of Family Life” — to hell with them! Cold, hunger, injustice,
jealousy, revolt! I’d been put to work as an apprentice at a
blacksmith’s; the only pay I got was kicks in the beam. My
fingers were raw with burns, and my arms ached with tugging
39
SUMMER, 1914
at the bellows, and my cheeks were scorched all day by the
great roaring forge.’ He had raised his tone; his voice was
vibrant with indignation, and with pleasure at its own sound.
Again with a swift glance he reviewed his audience. ‘Aye, I
could tell some “memories of childhood” if I set to it.’
Jacques caught an amused twinkle in Zelavsky’s eye. The
Russian gently raised his arm towards Quilleuf, and asked :
‘How did you come to join the Party?’
‘It’s ancient history,’ Quilleuf said. ‘When I was at sea, I’d
the luck to have two shipmates who dossed with me, who
knew, and did a bit of propaganding. I started reading, finding
out about it. So did some of the others. We lent each other
books, we talked things over. Cutting our wisdom teeth, eh?
In six months’ time there was a whole bunch of us that knew.
When I left the ship, I’d grown up; I was — a man!’
He fell silent, staring before him into the middle distance.
‘Yes, we were a group — a real gang of tough ’uns. What’s
become of all the others? Anyhow they ain’t written their
“Memoirs” — not they! . . . Hello, girls! And how’s your-
selves?’ He turned gallantly towards two young women who
were coming up. ‘Hot to-day, ain’t it?’
The ring of listeners parted to include the two Swiss com-
rades, Anais Julian and Emilie Cartier. One was a school-
mistress, the other a Red Cross nurse. They shared a flat,
and usually came together to these gatherings. Anais, the
teacher, spoke several languages and made translations of
foreign revolutionary articles for radical Swiss papers.
They were very different in appearance. Emilie, the younger,
was a small, plump brunette. Set off by the blue veil that
suited her so well and which she almost always wore, her
complexion had the creamy pink-and-whiteness of an English
child’s. She was a merry, mildly flirtatious girl, quick in her
gestures and retorts, though the latter never had a sting. Her
patients adored her. So did Quilleuf, who gave her no peace
from his semi-paternal banter. In the broadest accents but
with the utmost gravity, he would declare ; ‘It ain’t that she’s
exactly pretty, but, begob, our Emilie’s a treat to look at.’
Anais, the other girl, was also dark; she had prominent
40
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
cheek-bones, a high colour, and there was a hint of surliness
in the long, horse-like face. But both alike gave an impression
of perfect mental balance and vast reserves of strength — the
fine serenity of those for whom what they think is in perfect
harmony with what they are and do.
The conversation had taken a new turn.
Skada, the dreamer, was discoursing on justice.
‘Ach, but ve should always spread more and more justice
round us,’ he pleaded, in his slow, ingratiating voice. ‘Zat,
zat is ze great thing to make men keep peace between zem-
selves.’
‘Stuff!’ Quilleuf burst in. ‘When you ask for justice. I’m
with you till hell freezes — that’s sure. But, as for it making
men keep peace, I wouldn’t reckon too much on that; there’s
no fussier, more quarrelsome chap on earth than a fellow who
has justice on the brain.’
‘Nothing lasts that isn’t based on love,’ murmured little
Vanheede, who had just moved to Jacques’ side. ‘Peace is the
work of faith ; of faith and charity.’ He stayed some seconds
motionless, then walked away, an enigmatic smile upon his lips.
Jacques noticed Paterson and Alfreda slowly crossing the
room together, still engrossed in a low-voiced conversation;
they were going towards the other room, where presumably
Meynestrel was to be found. Alfreda looked tinier than ever
beside the Englishman; tall and lithe, his pipe as usual to the
fore, he was bending towards her as they walked. His clean-
shaven face, delicately moulded features, and, threadbare
though they were, the cut of his clothes, always made him
seem better turned out than the others. As she passed, Alfreda
cast at the group of men including Jacques that soft, brooding
glance of hers in which sometimes, as now, there shone an
unexpected gleam, a slumberous fire that seemed to mark her
out for some high destiny.
Paterson smiled to Jacques. He was obviously in high spirits,
which made him look more boyish than ever.
‘Look what Richardley’s given me I’ he cried gleefully,
holding out a small packet of tobacco. ‘Roll yourself a cigar-
ette, Thibault. No? You’re wrong.’ He took a puff and volup-
41 c*
SUMMER, 1914
tuously rolled the smoke out through his nostrils. ‘I assure
you, old boy, tobacco is the greatest boon on earth.’
Smiling, Jacques watched his receding form. Then unthink-
ingly he, too, began to move towards the door which had
just closed behind them. But on the threshold he halted and
leaned against the door-jamb.
Meynestrel’s voice was coming to him, harsh, cutting, with
an ironic lift at the close of certain phrases.
‘That goes without saying. I’m not against what are called
“reforms,” as a matter of course. The struggle for reforms
may serve in some countries as a fighting platform. And the
improved conditions of life thus obtained by the proletariat
may tend to speed up their revolutionary education, to some
extent. But your reformers always imagine that reforms are
the only means to attain their ends. They’re only one of
many means. Your reformers think that social legislation and
victories on the economic front are bound to increase not only
the well-being of the masses but their striking-power. I wonder !
They assume that reforms will be enough to bring about a
state of affairs in which the proletariat need only make a
quiet gesture and political power will drop into its hands like
a ripe plum. That’s as it may be ! But no child is born without
some very painful birth-pangs for the mother.’
‘And no revolution,’ a voice put in, ‘without a Wirbelsturm,
a phase of storm and stress.’ Jacques recognized the voice as
Mithoerg’s.
‘Your reformers,’ Meynestrel went on, ‘are grievously mis-
taken. Mistaken in two ways. Firstly, because they over-
estimate the proletariat; secondly, because they underestimate
capitalism. The proletariat is still far short of the stage of
development they fancy it has reached. It hasn’t enough
cohesion, not enough class-consciousness, not enough — heaps
of other things, to be able to take the offensive and seize the
reins of power. As for capitalism, your reformers imagine that
because it’s giving ground, it will let itself be nibbled away
piecemeal, by reform after reform, till nothing’s left. That’s
nonsense. Its anti-revolutionary zeal, its powers of resistance
are intact. And all the time it’s preparing the ground, with
42
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
diabolical cunning, for a counter-attack. Do you think the
capitalists don’t know what they’re about when they accept
reforms which win over to them the Party officials and divide
the working class by making distinctions between the workers
— and all the rest of it? Of course I know that capitalism’s
divided against itself; I know that, appearances notwith-
standing, the mutual hostility between capitalist groups is
steadily increasing. That’s another reason why we may be
sure capitalism, before throwing in its hand, will play all the
cards it has up its sleeve. All! And one of the trump cards on
which, rightly or wrongly, it most relies is — war! War, it
reckons, will restore to it, at one swoop, all the ground it has
been losing to the socialist advance. War will enable it to
divide, and crush, the proletariat. Firstly, to divide it — because
the masses are not at one in being immune from patriotie
sentiments, and a war would set those who thought nationally
(no small number, I should say) at loggerheads with those
who were faithful to the international ideal. Secondly, to
crush it — because considerable numbers of the workers on
both sides would fall at the front and such as survived would
be either dispirited (in the country that was beaten), or, in
the victor country, easy to lull into a state of coma. . . .’
6
Sunday y June 28
A GATHERING AT ‘HEADQUARTERS ’ — Continued
‘That Quilleuf — what a chap !’ Sergei Zelavsky smiled.
He had seen Jacques leave the group, and followed him up.
‘Funny how they stick, the things that happen to us when we’re
children, isn’t it?’ He seemed even more ‘up in the elouds’
than usual. ‘How about you, Thibault? What led you to
43
SUMMER, 1914
become a ?’ On the point of applying the term ‘revolu-
tionary’ to Jacques, he hesitated. ‘I mean, how do you come
to be with us?’
‘I wonder now!’ Jacques’ faint smile and slight movement
of retreat seemed to brush aside the question.
‘Personally,’ Zelavsky went on immediately with the eager-
ness of a shy man glad for once to yield to the temptation of
talking about himself, ‘personally, I know quite well how one
thing, it led to another, bit by bit, once I’d run away from
College. But I think the ground had been well prepared. The
first shock, it had come a great much earlier, when I was
quite a little kid.’
He was looking down, his eyes fixed on his hands, which he
was clasping and unclasping as he spoke — white, plumpish
hands, with short, stubby fingers. A near view revealed a
network of tiny wrinkles in the hollows of his temples, round
his eyes. He had a long, hooked, flat-sided nose, the prow-like
effect of which was heightened by the slanting eyebrows and
receding forehead. The fair, preposterously large moustache
seemed made of floss or spun glass, or some other curious
feathery substance, and the least draught set it rippling deli-
cately, like the filmy barbels of certain exotic fish.
He had shepherded Jacques discreetly to a quiet corner
at the far end of the room, behind the table strewn with
newspapers.
Without looking at Jacques, he went on talking about him-
self. ‘My father, he was the manager of a big factory he’d
built on the family estate, six versts from Gorodnia. I can
remember everything, oh quite clearly. Really I never think
about it,’ he smiled, raising his head and letting his gentle
eyes linger on Jacques’ face. ‘Only to-night — I wonder why
that is?’
Jacques’ way of listening, patient, earnest, and tactful,
always won him confidences. Zelavsky’s smile grew bolder.
‘It is so amusing, all that, is it not? I remember the big
house and Foma, our gardener, and the workmen’s huts on
the edge of the forest. I remember quite well, when I was
little, there was a sort of special — what do you call it'i—fite I
44
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
went to with my mother; I suppose it happened every year;
father’s birthday it must have been. I saw my father standing
by himself at a table in the middle of the factory yard, with
a big pile of roubles on a dish in front of him. All the work-
men, they march past him, one by one, in silence, with their
backs bent. And to each my father hands a coin. Then each
of them, one after the other, he takes father’s hand and kisses
it. Yes, that’s how we were in Russia, in those days; and I’m
sure that even now, in 1914, it’s just the same in some parts
of the country. My father, he was a very tall man, with broad
shoulders. He always held himself very straight up, I was
afraid of him. So, perhaps, were the workmen.
T remember, when my father went after breakfast to the
works, in his fur coat and cap, always he took his revolver
from the drawer of the hall table. And he slammed it — like
that! — all at once into the pocket. And never he went out
without his stick, it was all of lead and dreadfully heavy, I
could hardly lift it, but he would twirl it between two fingers and
whistle a tune.’ The Russian was still smiling at his memories.
‘My father, he was a very strong man,’ he went on after a
short pause. ‘He frightened me because of that, but I loved
him because of that. And all the workers, they were like me.
They were frightened because he was hard, a tyrant, even
cruel if it must be. But they loved him too, because he was
strong. And then he was just ; with no pity, but awfully just.’
He fell silent again, as if troubled by a belated scruple.
Then, reassured by Jacques’ attentive air, went on.
‘And then, one day, everything went wrong at home.
There was a coming and a going of men in uniform. My
father, he did not come back to dinner. My mother would
not sit down to table. Doors banged. The servants ran up and
down the passages. My mother never left the upstairs window.
I heard they say: “strike,” “fighting,” “police charge.” And
suddenly there were shouts downstairs. Then I poke my head
between two banisters on the stairs. What do I see? A long
stretcher, all wet with mud and snow, and what do I see on
it? My father lying flat, his overcoat torn up, his head bare.
My father looking quite small, curled up, an arm hanging
45
SUMMER, 1914
down. I started crying. They threw a cloth over my head and
rushed me to the far end of the house, amongst the servants
who were saying prayers before the ikon and chattering like
magpies. Then I got to understand. It was the workmen, the
men I’d seen marching past my father with their backs nicely
bowed, kissing his hand. It was the same workmen, who’d
thought that day they’d had enough of scraping and bowing
and being handed roubles. They’d smashed the machinery,
and they’d proved themselves the stronger. Yes, the workmen.
Stronger than father !’
He had ceased smiling and was stroking his long moustache,
peering up at Jacques with a quaintly solemn air.
‘That day, old chap, all the world changed for me. No more
I was on father’s side, I was on the workers’ side. Yes, that
day it happened. For the first time I knew how grand and fine
that is : a crowd of bent-backs straightening them up.’
‘Had they killed your father?’ Jacques asked.
Zelavsky went into a peal of laughter. ‘Killed? Not a bit!
He was blue and black all over, you know, but nothing grave.
Only after that, father, he was not manager any more. He
went back never to the Works. He lived with us, with his
vodka, bullying always my mother and the servants and
peasants. Me they sent to the town, to college. I never came
home. And one day two or three years later mother wrote to
me, telling me to pray and to be sad because my father was
dead.’ His face had grown earnest again. Hurriedly he mut-
tered, as if talking to himself: ‘But, of course, I’d given up
praying already. It was quite soon after that I ran away.’
They were silent for a while.
Jacques’ eyes were fixed on the floor; his thoughts, too, had
suddenly reverted to memories of childhood. He saw again his
father’s flat in Paris; he could even smell the odour of the
carpets and curtains, and the curious stuffy smell, emanating
from his father’s study, that greeted him when he came home
from afternoon school. Pictures rose in his mind of old
Mademoiselle de Waize pottering to and fro, and Gise, the
childish Gise of long ago with her round face and glowing,
faithful eyes. He recalled his schooldays: the class-rooms and
46
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
the playground, his friendship with Daniel, the masters’ sus-
picion, the mad escapade to Marseilles, and his homecoming
with Antoine, his father waiting for them in his frock-coat
under the hall lamp. And then the dark phase of his youth :
the reformatory, his cell, his daily walk escorted by a warder.
A tremor ran through his body. Opening his eyes wide, he
drew a deep breath and looked round the room.
‘Hullo !’ he exclaimed, breaking impatiently away from the
corner in which they had been standing, and shaking himself
like a dog that has just scrambled out of a pond. ‘Why, there’s
Prezel !’
Ludwig Prezel and his sister Cecilia had just entered. They
were casting helpless glances at the various knots of people
in the room; obviously they were newcomers and feeling
rather lost. When they noticed Jacques, they waved a friendly
greeting simultaneously, and moved quietly towards him.
Brother and sister were remarkably alike; both were of a
height, and dark. They had the same rotund, somewhat
thick-set neck, the same type of head, the head one finds on
classical busts, with boldly defined, impassive features, and
which seems less a work of nature than moulded in accordance
with a canon of art. The bridge of the nose carried on the
straight, downward movement of the forehead, without a
notch at the level of the eyes. Even the eyes did little to impart
animation to the statuesque faces; though perhaps Ludwig’s
seemed a little more alive than his sister’s, in which there
never shone a gleam of human emotion.
‘We got back yesterday,’ Cecilia explained.
‘From Munich?’ Jacques enquired, as he shook hands with
them.
‘From Munich, Hamburg and Berlin.’
‘And last month,’ Prezel added, ‘we were in Italy, at
Milano.’
A swarthy little man, with lop-sided shoulders, who hap-
pened to be passing, stopped short, his face aglow with interest.
‘So you’ve been at Milan!’ he exclaimed, and a broad
smile disclosed his big, equine teeth. ‘Did you meet the Avanti
comrades?’
47
SUMMER, 1914
‘Of course.’
Cecilia turned and looked at him. ‘Do you come from those
parts?’
The Italian laughed and nodded emphatically several times.
Jacques introduced him. ‘Comrade Saffrio.’
The sturdy, if slightly deformed, little Italian was a man in
the forties. The dark velvety lustre of his night-black eyes gave
beauty to his face.
‘I knew your Italian “Party” before 1910,’ Prezel said.
‘There’s no denying it used to be one of the feeblest in Europe.
What a difference now! We watched the strikes during the
Red Week. Wunderbar, the progress 1 ’
‘Yes, indeed I’ Saffrio exclaimed, ‘What energy and courage !’
‘Italy,’ Prezel continued in a didactic tone, ‘has certainly a
great example taken from the organization methods of our
German social democracy. Also the Italian working-class, it is
well grouped together, well disciplined to-day, and ready to
go quickly vorwdrts. Mark-worthy is it that the peasant prole-
tariat there is stronger than in any other land.’
Saffrio chuckled with delight. ‘Fifty-nine Members are on
our side in Parliament. And our Press! Why our Avanti sells
over forty-five thousand copies of each number. When were
you in Italy?’
‘In April and May. For the Ancona Congress.’
‘Know Serrati and Vella?’
‘Serrati, Vella, Bacci, Moscallegro, Malatesta — ^we know
them all.’
‘And our great Turati?’
‘‘Ach, that one’s only a liberal.’
‘And Mussolini? He’s not just a liberal. He’s the real thing!
Have you met him?’
‘Yes,’ Prezel replied briefly, with a faint grimace that
Saffrio did not notice.
‘We used to live together,’ the Italian went on, ‘Benito and
I — at Lausanne. He was waiting for the amnesty, to be allowed
to go back to our country. Every time he visits Switzerland, he
comes to see me. Last winter . . .’
‘E'm Abenteurer,’ Cecilia murmured.
48
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
‘He comes from the Romagna — like me.’ A glint of pride
flickered in Saffrio’s eyes as he gazed at the Germans. ‘He’s
a boyhood chum of mine is Benito — like a brother ! His father
kept an inn four miles from my home. I knew him well, the
old man; he was one of the first internationalists in the
Romagna. You should have heard him at his pub, trouncing
the priests and patriots. And wasn’t he proud of his son ! He
used to say, “Benito and me, if one day we got down to the
job, just he and I, we’d wipe out all the blackguards in the old
country!” His eyes used to shine just like Benito’s. Ever
noticed the power there is in Benito’s eyes?’
Turning to Jacques, Cecilia said some words in German,
in a low tone. Jacques smiled.
Saffrio’s face darkened. ‘What was she saying about Benito?’
he snapped.
‘She said he ... he shows off a bit, he pushes himself for-
ward,’ Jacques translated.
‘Mussolini?’ Saffrio shouted, darting a furious glance at the
girl. ‘No! Mussolini is as straight as a die, no hanky-panky
about him. All his life he’s been an “anti” — antiroyalist,
antipatriot, anticlerical. A great condottiere, too. The real
revolutionary leader. And always practical, realistic. Deeds
first, words after. And a perfect devil for work; during the
Forli strikes he never took a moment’s rest, holding meetings,
speaking in the streets. A fine speaker, too ; every word straight
from the shoulder! “Do this, don’t do that!” You should
have seen how pleased he was when we unscrewed the rails
a!nd held up a train. All the active measures against the
Tripoli expedition were his work, his and his paper’s. In
Italy he’s the incarnation of our fighting spirit. And it’s he
who day by day in the Avanti keeps the revolutionary furia at
boiling point. He’s the man the King and his government
have to fear most. Yes, if socialism’s suddenly forged ahead in
my country, it’s mainly thanks to Benito. This last month,
for instance. The Red Week. How he jumped at the oppor-
tunity! Ah, per Bacco, if only they’d listened to his paper! A
few days more and Italy would have gone up in flames. If the
Confederazione of Labour hadn’t taken fright and called off the
49
SUMMER, 1914
Strike, it was the beginning of a civil war, the downfall of
the monarchy. The Italian Revolution ! One night, in the
Romagna, the comrades proclaimed the Republic. Si, si — it’s
a fact.’
He had deliberately turned his back on Cecilia and her
brother, and was addressing Jacques only. Smiling again, he
added in a tone at once« peremptory and wheedling, ‘Be care-
ful, Thibault, and don’t believe everything you hear.’
Then, faintly shrugging his shoulders, he moved away,
studiously ignoring the two Germans.
There was a short silence.
Alfreda and Paterson had left the door of Meynestrel’s
room open. He was not in sight but, though he was not speaking
loudly, his voice could be heard now and again.
‘And in your country,’ Zelavsky asked Prezel, ‘are things
going well?’
‘In Germany? Surely. Better and better.’
‘In Germany,’ Cecilia said, ‘twenty-five years ago there
were only a million socialists; ten years ago, two millions.
To-day there are four millions.’
She spoke softly, hardly moving her lips, but the tone was
challenging, and her dark, brooding eyes lingered first on
Jacques, then on the Russian. Seeing her, Jacques was always
reminded of Homer’s epithet for Hera, ‘the ox-eyed goddess.’
‘That’s certain,’ he said in a conciliatory tone. ‘Your “social-
demo” movement has put in some fine constructive work in
the last twenty-five years. The genius for organization shown
by its leaders is perfectly amazing. But perhaps one can’t help
wondering if the revolutionary spirit isn’t — how shall I put
it? — petering out a bit in the German Party. Precisely because
your energies are directed wholly on organization.’
It was Prezel who answered him.
‘The revolutionary spirit petering out? J^ein, you need not
to fear on that score. You see, our first duty is to organize —
a force to become. We stand for realities, not only theories;
and that’s what tells! If in these latter years — I’m thinking
notably of 1911 and 1912 — the peace has been kept in Europe,
whose work was that? .Aind if to-day we may hope that a
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
great European war is out of the question for many years --
it’s thanks to whom? To the German proletariat. Everyone
knows that. You spoke of the “constructive work” done by
social democracy. It’s an even greater work than you suspect
— something truly solid and kolossal. Nothing short of a State
within the State. And how did we do all this? Mostly by the
energy we put forth in Parliament; and our influence in the
Reichstag is still ground gaining. If to-morrow the Pan-
Germanists tried to work up another Agadir affair, they’d
find against them not only the two hundred thousand who
demonstrated in the Treptlow Park, but all the socialist
members of the Reichstag, with every liberal in the land
behind them !’
Sergei Zelavsky had been listening attentively. Now he
remarked; ‘Still, when the War Levy was voted on, your
socialists voted Aye.’
'Pardon,’ said Cecilia, raising a monitory finger.
Her brother broke in at once, the German accent and idiom
more pronounced now he was speaking volubly.
'Ach, that was only Taktik, Zelavsky.’ His smile was slightly
condescending. ‘You do not understand. There were two quite
different things involved ; there was the Militdrvorlage, the law
concerning armaments, and there was the Wehrsteuer, the
supplementary estimates for military expenditure. The Social
Democrats, first they voted against the militarist law and then,
when it had been passed in spite of their opposition, they
voted for supplies. And that was very clever Taktik. Why?
Because in this law something there was absolutely new in
the constitution, something quite vital to us : a direct imperial
levy on private wealth. That was a not-to-be-missed chance
for us ! Because it was a real socialist triumph for the prole-
tariat. Now, do you understand? And what proves our socialist
members are quite dead against the Militansmus, is that every
time they get a chance they vote against the Chancellor’s
imperialist foreign policy, like one man.’
‘That’s so,’ Jacques admitted. ‘All the same . . .’ He
seemed reluctant to continue.
‘All the same . . .?’ Zelavsky prompted eagerly.
51
SUMMER, 1914
‘All the same — what?’ Cecilia asked.
‘Well, I can’t help it, but somehow when I was at Berlin
and came in contact with some of your socialist members, I
had a feeling that their struggle against militarism was rather
— how shall I put it? — half-hearted. Liebknecht, of course, is
an exception ; I’m thinking of the others. I could see that most
of them were reluctant to go to the root of the evil and attack
it there; I mean, to challenge frankly and openly the sub-
servience of the masses to the military power. It seemed to
me that, in the last analysis, they were still, if I may say
so, incorrigibly German.', convinced, of course, of the world-
wide mission of the proletariat, but convinced above all of the
mission of the German proletariat. And very far from carrying
their internationalism and antimilitarism as far as these are
carried in France.’
‘Naturally,’ Cecilia said, and for a second the eyelids veiled
the enigmatic eyes.
‘Naturally,’ Prezel echoed in a tone of truculent superiority.
Zelavsky hastened to intervene.
‘Your bourgeois democracies,’ he remarked with a shrewd
smile, ‘they allow socialists in their parliaments just because
they know so well that a socialist in the government, he’s not
a real dangerous socialist.’
From the other end of the room came Miihoerg, Char-
chovsky and old Boissonis. Ludwig and Cecilia shook hands
with them.
Zelavsky turned to Jacques, still smiling to himself, mildly
and gently wagging his head to and fro.
‘Do you know what I think? I think that, to keep the masses
in servitude, your democratic governments, your republics
and parliamentary monarchies, though they may not seem so,
are methods no less terrible — and more cunning — than our
Czarist government, with all its horrors.’
‘Yes!’ Mithoerg, who had overheard, put in excitedly.
‘And how right the Pilot was the other night when he said;
“The first task of the revolution is a fight to the death against
democracy I” ’
‘Wait a bit!’ Jacques said. ‘For one thing the Pilot had
52
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
only Russia in mind, the Russian revolution. What he said
was that the great change in Russia shouldn’t start oflF with
a bourgeois democracy. Also, don’t let’s exaggerate; one can
do some useful work within the framework of a democracy.
A man like Jaures, for instance. . . . Only just think what
the socialists have already achieved in France, and, above all,,
in Germany.’
‘No!’ Mithoerg exclaimed. ‘Quite different things they are:
the emancipation that comes by working within the frame-
work of a democracy, and a revolution. In France the leaders
have gone more or less bourgeois; they’ve cast off the pure
revolutionary spirit.’
. ‘We’re going to listen a bit to what they’re saying at that
end,’ Boissonis broke in, with a meaning glance towards the
open door.
‘Is Meynestrel there?’ Prezel enquired.
‘Don’t you hear him?’ said Mithoerg.
They stopped talking, listened. The sound of Meynestrel’s
voice came to them, all on the same note, meticulously clear.
Zelavsky slipped his arm in Jacques’.
‘Let’s go and hear it, too.’
7
Sunday, June 28
A GATHERING AT ‘HEADQUARTERS ’ — continued
Jacques came and stood beside Vanheede who, with
clasped hands and half-closed eyelids, was leaning against the
dusty shelves that Monier used as a dump for out-of-date
pamphlets.
‘I, for one,’ said Trauttenbach — a German Jew, with curling,
sandy hair, who lived in Berlin but made frequent visits to
53
SUMMER, 1914
Geneva — ‘I don’t believe you can get anywhere by law-abiding
methods. Leave that sort of half-measures to the intellectuals.’
‘Not so fast,’ said Richardley, a tall young man with a
shock of thick black hair. It was about him this cosmopolitan
band had gathered, three years before, and until Meynestrel
appeared on the scene he had been their leading spirit. Of his
own accord, however, he had retired into the background
before the superiority of the Pilot, at whose side he had ever
since played the part of an able, devoted second-in-command.
‘The answer’s different according to the country you’ve in
mind. You can’t deny that in some democratic countries, like
France and England, the revolutionary movement does pro-
gress by legal means, for the time being.’ He always spoke
with his lean, resolute chin thrust well forward. The clean-
shaven face with the white forehead framed in dark hair was
pleasant enough at the first glance, yet the intensely black
eyes had no trace of gentleness, the thin lips ended at each
corner in a sharp-cut line and there was a disagreeable harsh-
ness in his voice.
‘The trouble,’ Charcovsky said, ‘is to know just when to
proceed from law-abiding methods to violent, insurrectionary
action.’
Skada said with a jerk of his hook nose :
‘Ven the steam pushes it up too strong, the lid of the samovar,
it blows off of its own accord.’
There was an outburst of laughter, fierce laughter, of the
sort Vanheede used to refer to as ‘their cannibal glee.’
‘Bravo, Pundit !’ Quilleuf cried.
‘So long as all the power is in the hands of the capitalists,’
Boissonis observed, moistening his pink lips with his small,
snake-like tongue, ‘the people’s demands for democratic
liberties can’t do much to speed up the real revolu ’
‘Obviously,’ Meynestrel cut in, without so much as a glance
at the old professor.
There was a pause in the conversation.
Boissonis made an attempt to press his argument home.
‘Doesn’t the course of history prove it? Just see what hap-
pened in the case of . . .’
54
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
This time it was Richardley who cut him short.
‘History, indeed ! Does history ever justify the belief that
one can foresee, that one can predict the hour when a revo-
lution will break out? Never in your life! One fine day the
samovar must blow up, but there’s no foretelling just when the
suppressed energy of popular discontent is going to take effect.’
‘That’s as may be!’ Meynestrel rapped out in a tone ad-
mitting no reply.
He said nothing further, but those who were used to his
ways knew he was about to speak.
At such gatherings, he would silently follow up a train of
thought and stay for a long time without taking part in the
discussion, merely interjecting an enigmatic ‘That’s as may
be,’ or an elusive and disarming ‘Obviously !’, which, coming
from any other man, might have had a ludicrous effect; but
the shrewd glance, the sternness of the voice, the fixity of
purpose and intense preoccupation that the tone conveyed
never raised smiles. Rather, they compelled the attention even
of those who were antagonized by his peremptory manner.
‘There’s a distinction to be made,’ he said. ‘You spoke of
“foreseeing” a revolution. What does that mean exactly?’
They were all listening now. He stretched out his injured
leg in front of him and cleared his throat. His claw-like hand,
the fingers of which were often half clenched, as if holding an
invisible ball, rose in the air, lightly stroked his beard and
came to rest on his breast.
‘There’s a distinction to be made between a nvolution and
an insurrection. Another distinction between a revolution and
revolutionary conditions. Revolutionary conditions don’t invari-
ably lead to a revolution, even if they lead to an insurrection.
. . . Take what happened in Russia, in 1905 ; first, there were
revolutionary conditions; then an insurrection; but no revo-
lution.’ He paused for a moment, setting his thoughts in order.
‘Richardley talks of “foreseeing.” What does he mean by that?
Accurately foreseeing just when conditions shall have become
revolutionary is no easy matter. All the same, the action of
the wage-earners, if brought to bear on pre-revolutionary
conditions, may foster and even speed up the growth of revolu-
55
SUMMER, 1914
tionary conditions. >But what actually gets a revolution under
way is almost invariably some outside, unexpected and more
or less unpredictable event; one, I mean, the date of which
cannot be determined in advance.’
He had rested his elbow on the back of Alfreda’s chair, his
chin propped on his fist. For a minute the shrewd yet
visionary eyes seem riveted on some distant scene.
‘Let’s consider things exactly as they are. In reality. In
actual practice.’ (He had a manner of his own, shrill as a
clash of cymbals, of uttering the word ‘reality’.) ‘For example,
in Russia . . . One should always hark back to examples!
Hard facts 1 That’s the only way of getting to know anything.
We aren’t dealing with mathematics. There’s a lot in common
between revolution and the art of medicine. First you have
theory, and then practice. And a third thing’s needed as well :
the art of it. But that’s beside the point.’ (Before proceeding
he cast a smiling glance at Alfreda, as if, to his mind, she
alone was capable of appreciating the digression.) ‘Well, in
Russia, in 1904, before the Manchurian War, conditions were
pre-revolutionary. Pre-revolutionary conditions which might
have, which ought to have, led to actual revolutionary con-
ditions. But in what way? Was it possible to foresee in what
way? Certainly not!
‘More than one abscess looked like coming to a head. There
was the agrarian question. There was the Jewish question.
There was the trouble with Finland, the Polish business.
There was the Russo-Japanese tension in the Far East. It
was quite impossible to guess which would prove the un-
expected factor that was to transform the pre-revolutionary
phase into the revolutionary phase. And all of a sudden the
unexpected happened. A camarilla of adventurers with an eye
to the main chance succeeded in gaining sufficient influence
over the Czar to force him into a war in the Far East, with-
out the knowledge and against the advice of his Foreign
Minister. Who could have foreseen that?’
‘Surely might it haye been foreseen that the Russo-Japanese
friction in Manchuria would inevitably bring about a clash,’
Zelavsky put in mildly.
56
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
‘But who could foresee that the clash would take place in
1905, or that it would take place in connection not with
Manchuria but with Korea? Here is an example of the new
factor that can transform pre-revolutionary into revolutionary
conditions. In the case of Russia, it took that war, those
defeats. Only then we saw conditions entering the revolu-
tionary phase, and leading to an insurrection. An insurrection,
mind you, not a revolution. Not a revolution of the workers.
And why not? Because the transition from revolutionary con-
ditions to an insurrection is one thing, and that from an
insurrection to a revolution is another. Isn’t that so, little
girl?’ he added in a low voice.
Several times while he was speaking, he had craned his head
forward to peer enquiringly at the young woman’s face. Now
he fell silent, apparently unmindful of the others’ presence
and of what he had just been saying. He seemed to be review-
ing, on some transcendental plane, the whole set of doctrines
which usually engrossed him, though never to the point of
making him lose sight of the relation between theory and
fact, between revolutionary ideals and the realities of the
moment. He was staring straight before him. At such times,
his vitality seemed wholly concentrated in the dark intensity
of his gaze — a gaze so little human that it brought to mind a
secret, constant flame burning within him, wasting his
tissues, eating his life away.
Old Boissonis, who was more interested in revolutionary
theory than in actual revolution, broke the silence.
‘Yes, yes! Quite so! It’s devilish hard to foresee the switch-
over from pre-revolutionary to revolutionary conditions . . .
Wait a bit, though. Once revolutionary conditions have been
created, shouldn’t we be able to predict the outbreak of a
revolution?’
‘To “predict” !’ Meynestrel broke in, his nerves on edge.
‘There you are again ! What matters isn’t so much to predict.
What matters is to prepare, to speed up the transition from
revolutionary conditions to actual revolution. Everything then
depends on subjective factors : the fitness of the leaders and
the revolutionary groups for revolutionary action. And it’s
57
SUMMER, 1914
up to all of US, the pioneers, to raise that fitness to its highest
power, by all and every means. When a sufficient degree of
fitness is attained, then and only then it becomes possible to
accelerate the passage to revolution ! Then it becomes possible
to control the march of events ! Then, if that’s what you’re
after, it becomes possible to foresee V
He had spoken the last few sentences all in one breath,
lowering his voice, and so rapidly that many of the foreigners
present had not been able to follow what he said. Now he
stopped speaking, and throwing back his head a little, gave
a brief smile and shut his eyes.
Jacques, who had remained standing, noticed an empty
chair by the window ; going up to it, he sat down. At no time
did he partake more fully in the life of the community than
when he was thus able to break contact, to avoid rubbing
shoulders and, keeping in the background, to feel that he
possessed himself once more. At such moments his feelings
were not merely those of fellowship but warmly fraternal.
Ensconced now in his chair, his arms folded, leaning his head
against the wall, he sent his gaze roaming over the group of his
friends. After a desultory pause they were again turning
towards Meynestrel. Their attitudes were various, but all alike
passionately attentive. How he loved them, these men who
had given themselves up, body and soul, to the revolutionary
cause, men of whose combative, hounded-down existences he
knew almost every detail !
What if he did disagree with certain of them on the ideo-
logical plane, what if he was grieved by the lack of under-
standing in some of them, by the rough ways of others? He
loved them all for their integrity, their single-heartedness.
And he was proud of being loved by them ; for they did love
him, different from them though he was, because they felt
that he, too, was single-hearted. A sudden rush of emotion
misted his eyes, blurring his sight of them as individuals, and
for a while he seemed to see this little band of outlaws hailing
from the four corners of Europe as a composite picture of
oppressed mankind growing alive to its servitude and at last
rebelling in a desperate effort to rebuild the world.
58
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
The voice of the Pilot broke the silence.
‘Let’s come back to the precedent of Russia : to that great
adventure. One’s obliged to do so. In 1904, was it possible to
foretell that the then pre-revolutionary conditions would
become revolutionary the very next year, after the reverses
in the Far East? No! And in 1905, once a state of revolution
had been matured by circumstances, was it possible to know
whether the revolution, the real proletarian revolution, would
break out? No! And still less whether it could succeed. The
objective factors looked highly promising. But the subjective
factors were inadequate. Remember how things stood. Factual
conditions, first rate; military disasters, a political crisis. An
economic crisis, too ; supplies had run out, and there was
little short of a famine. And so on. . . . And the political
temperature was rising to fever-heat, what with general strikes,
peasant rebellions, mutinies, the Potemkin affair, the December
insurrections in Moscow. Why then did revolutionary condi-
tions fail to produce a revolution? On account of the inadequacy
of the subjective factors, Boissonis. Because nothing was in
proper shape. There was no real will to revolution. No clear
line of action in the minds of the leaders. No agreement
between them. No subordination, no discipline. No co-
ordination between leaders and the led. And, above all, no
unity between the industrial and the rural masses ; no active
revolutionary leaven amongst the peasantry.’
There was a timid protest from Zelavsky. ‘But surely the
moujiks . . .?’
‘The moujiks? Yes, they kept up a certain agitation in their
villages; they occupied the estates of their overlords, burnt
down a barine’s manor-house here and there. Granted ! But
who was it showed their willingness to fight the workers?
Why, the moujiks ! Who were the rank-and-file that savagely
shot down, wiped out the revolutionary proletariat in the
streets of Moscow? Moujiks, every one of them. An utter lack
of the subjective factors !’ he repeated bitterly. ‘When one
knows what happened in December, 1905; when one thinks
of the time wasted in windy rhetoric within the ranks of social-
democracy ; when one finds that the leaders hadn’t even agreed
59
SUMMER, 1914
upon the aims to be pursued, hadn’t even agreed upon a
general plan of campaign — so much so that the strikes in
Saint Petersburg were stupidly called off just when the dis-
turbances began in Moscow; so much so that the strike in
the Postal and Railway Services came to an end in December,
just when a breakdown in the transport services would have
paralysed the Government and prevented them from bringing
up to Moscow the regiments which promptly smashed the
insurrection — yes, when one remembers all these things, it’s
easy to understand why, in that Russia of 1905, the revolu-
tion ’ He hesitated for a fraction of a second, bent his head
towards Alfreda, then muttered very fast : “why the revolution
was doomed, doomed from the outset.’
Richardley, who with his elbows on his knees and shoulders
bent forward had been listening, twiddling his thumbs, now
looked up in surprise.
‘Doomed from the outset?’
‘Of course it was !’ Meynestrel replied.
There was a pause.
Jacques, from his seat, ventured to suggest :
‘In that case, instead of trying to force things to an issue,
wouldn’t it have been better . . .?’
Meynestrel, who was gazing at Alfreda, smiled without
turning towards Jacques. Skada, Boissonis, Trautenbach,
Zelavsky and Prezel nodded approval.
‘Considering,’ Jacques continued, ‘that the Czar had granted
them the Constitution, wouldn’t it have been better . . .?’ He
paused again. Boissonis completed the phrase.
‘. . . to have come to a tentative agreement with the bour-
geois parties?’
‘And to have taken advantage of the situation to reorganize
Russian social democracy on a sound basis,’ Prezel added.
‘No, I don’t agree with you there,’ Zelavsky protested mildly.
‘Russia isn’t Germany. And I consider that Lenin was right.’
‘Certainly not!’ Jacques exclaimed. ‘Plekhanoff was right.
After the October Constitution, the best thing to do was not
to take up arms. The thing to do was to call a halt. To con-
solidate the ground won.’
60
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
‘They took the heart from the masses,’ Skada put in. ‘For
no purpose they sent folk to their death.’
‘Quite true !’ Jacques eagerly assented. ‘They’d have saved
no end of suffering, no end of needless bloodshed.’
‘That’s as may be!’ Meynestrel’s voice was gruff. He was
no longer smiling.
All waited in silence for him to speak again.
‘A foredoomed attempt?’ he went on after a short pause.
‘Undoubtedly. Foredoomed as far back as October. But need-
less bloodshed? Certainly not!’
He had risen from his seat — a thing he very rarely did,
once he had started speaking. He went over to the window,
looked out absentmindedly and hurriedly returned to Alfreda’s
side.
‘The December rising could not lead to the triumph of a
new regime. Granted ! But was that a reason not to act as if
that triumph had been feasible? Surely not. In the first place
because one never can tell how strong revolutionary forces are
until they’ve been put to the test, until after a revolution has
been attempted. Plekhanoff was wrong. It was necessary to
resort to force after October. It was needful that blood should
be shed. 1905 was only a rehearsal. A necessary one ; historically
necessary, I mean. October was, after the Commune and on
a larger scale, the second attempt to turn an imperialistic war
into a social revolution. The blood that was spilled was not
spilled in vain! Down to 1905, the whole Russian nation —
even the proletariat — believed in the Czar. People crossed
themselves when they spoke his name. But when the Czar
ordered the people to be fired upon, the proletariat and even
many moujiks began to realize that there was nothing to be
expected from the Czar, any more than from the ruling classes.
In so mystically minded, so backward a country, this blood-
shed was indispensable for the promotion of class-consciousness.
Nor is that all. From the standpoint of technique, of revolu-
tionary technique, the experiment was an extremely valuable
one. The leaders were thus able to put their abilities to the
test for the first time. As will perhaps be verified in the near
future !’
61
SUMMER, 1914
He was still standing, his eyes flashing, every sentence
punctuated by some motion of his hands. His wrists were as
supple as a woman’s; and the dainty, sinuous movements of
his fingers made each gesture reminiscent of the East, of the
expressive hand-play of Cambodian dancers or Indian snake-
charmers.
He patted Alfreda’s shoulder, and sat down again.
‘As will perhaps be proved in the very near future,’ he
repeated. ‘Europe to-day, like 1905 Russia, is obviously in a
pre-revolutionary ferment. The interests of the capitalist world
are in a state of latent conflict. The apparent prosperity
Europe now enjoys is a mere illusion. But when and how will
the new factor emerge? Of what nature will it prove to be?
An economic crisis? A political crisis? A war? A revolution
within some State or other? A clever man indeed who could
foretell that. Not that it matters, of course. The new factor
will emerge in its due time. What does matter is to be ready,
when that time comes. In the Russia of 1905 the proletariat
was not ready. That’s why the attempt proved an utter
failure. Are the European workers ready? Are their leaders
ready? No. Is there sufficient solidarity amongst the sections
of the International? No. Is the unity between the leaders of
the proletariat well enough established to ensure efficiency?
No. Is it to be supposed that the triumph of the revolution
will ever be possible without a close cohesion between the
revolutionary forces of every country? True, they’ve set up
this International Bureau. But what does it amount to? To very
little more than an organ of information. Not even the embryo
of that Central Proletarian Power lacking which no simul-
taneous and decisive action will ever be possible ! The Socialist
International? A demonstration of the spiritual unity of the
workers. And that’s no mean achievement. But it has little
organization as yet. Everything remains to be done. In what
way does it exert its activities? In getting up Congresses !
Don’t think I’m sneering at our Congresses ! I’ll be in Vienna,
myself, on August 23rd. But, in point of fact, there’s nothing
to be expected from such gatherings. Take Basel, for instance,
in 1912. A grandiose demonstration against the war in the
62
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
Balkans. Granted ! Now let’s see what came of it. Admirable
resolutions were passed amid vast enthusiasm. But especially
to be admired was the skill with which the real problem was
sidetracked. Why, they even cut out the words “general strike”
in their resolutions! Remember the proceedings. Was the
problem of a strike at any time examined thoroughly, as a
practical problem — to be solved in a different way according
to the circumstances, according to the country? What should
the positive attitude of the workers in such and such a country
be, in the event of such and such a war? War is a specific
factor. The proletariat— another factor. But when such factors
are discussed, our leaders talk “about it and about,” like
parsons babbling about good and evil. That’s how things are.
The International carries on like a Sunday School. The fusion
between doctrine, on the one hand, and the class-consciousness,
resources and revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses, on the
other, hasn’t even begun.’
He was silent for a few moments.
Then, ‘Everything remains to be done,’ he said in a low,
pensive voice. ‘Everything. The education of the workers
implies a huge, co-ordinated effort that has hardly been
started as yet. I must refer to this at Vienna. Everything
remains to be done,’ he repeated very softly. ‘Isn’t that so,
little girl?’
He smiled briefly; then his gaze swept his audience, and
his brows knitted.
‘For instance; how is it that the International hasn’t yet
bethought itself of having a monthly or, better, a weekly paper
of its own? A European JVews-sheet published in every language
and common to every Labour organization in every country?
I’ll refer to this at the Congress. It’s the best way for the
leaders at one and the same time to give one and the same
answer to the millions of workers who in every country are
asking themselves practically the same questions. It’s the best
way of enabling every worker, whether militant or otherwise,
to be kept accurately posted as to political and economic con-
ditions throughout the world. In the present state of affairs
it’s one of the best ways of still further developing the inter-
63
SUMMER, 1914
national instinct in the workers ; an iron-worker of Motala or
a Liverpool docker must each be brought to feel as an event
affecting him personally a strike that has just broken out in
Hamburg, or in San Francisco, or in Tiflis. The mere fact
that every worker, every peasant, when he comes home from
his work on a Saturday evening will find waiting on his table,
ready to hand, a paper he knows to be, at the same hour, in
the hands of every wage-earner throughout the world; the
mere fact that he is able to read in it items of news, statistics,
information, resolutions which he knows are being read at the
same time throughout the world by all such as are conscious,
as he himself is, of the rights of the masses — these facts alone
would have an incalculable informative effect. Besides which,
the effect on the governments would be . .
The concluding phrases were poured forth at a speed which
made them very hard to catch. He broke off sharp on seeing
Janotte, the lecturer, coming in with a few friends in attendance.
And all the regular attendants at ‘Headquarters’ knew the
Pilot would say nothing more that evening.
8
Sunday^ June 28
JACQUES DEBATES WITH MEYNESTREL AND MITHOERG THE
NECESSITY OF VIOLENCE IN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS
Jacques had not seen Janotte before. The man was exactly
as Alfreda had described him. In a suit of an old-fashioned
cut, a shade too tight for his bulky form, he tiptoed across the
room; his curate-like gestures, his bows and scrapes, seemed
out of keeping with the pomposity of his countenance, crowned
with a shock of prodigiously white hair like the mane of some
heraldic animal.
64
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
Jacques got up at once and, in the general confusion while
the introductions were being made, slipped away to the little
study at the far end, to await Meynestrel there.
He had not long to wait before, accompanied as usual by
Alfreda, Meynestrel entered the room.
The interview was brief. In a few minutes Meynestrel had
sorted out from the Guittberg-Tobler file all the documents
bearing on the charge against them and handed them over to
Jacques, along with a personal note for Hosmer. Then he gave
some general advice as to the best way to set on foot the enquiry.
He rose from his chair. ‘And now, little girl, to supper !’
Quickly Alfreda gathered up the papers scattered on the
table and slipped them into their places in the file.
Meynestrel went up to Jacques and gazed at him for a while.
Then, in a friendly voice, quite different from the tone he had
been using during their previous conversation, he gently asked :
‘What’s wrong this evening?’
Taken aback, Jacques smiled uneasily. ‘Nothing’s wrong —
I assure you !’
‘You’re not put out by this trip to Vienna?’
‘Quite the contrary. Why?’
‘Just now, I fancied you seemed worried . . .’
‘Not a bit of it !’
‘And a little . . . lost.’
Jacques smiled more naturally. ‘“Lost!”’ he repeated.
Then his shoulders drooped as if he suddenly felt tired, and
the smile left his lips. ‘Yes, there are days when, for some
reason one can’t fathom, one feels more than usually . . . lost.
But JOM must know all about that. Pilot.’
Without answering, Meynestrel took two steps, that brought
him to the door, whence he looked back to see if Alfreda was
ready. Then he opened the door for her to go out before him.
With a fleeting smile he turned to Jacques, murmuring in
a breath : ‘Of course. Of course, I know all about that.’
Everyone had left. Monier was busy putting back the chairs
and generally tidying up. On Saturday and Sunday nights
65
D
SUMMER, 1914
the Headquarters usually did not empty till the small hours.
But, on this particular evening, most of the habitues had
arranged to meet after dinner at the Salle Ferrer, for Janotte’s
lecture.
Meynestrel had let Alfreda go a little ahead. Now he took
Jacques’ arm and, limping a little, went down the stairs
beside him.
‘One’s alone, my dear Jacques. And one’s got to accept that
once for all.’ He spoke hurriedly, in a low voice. Pausing, he
shot a glance in Alfreda’s direction, and repeated almost in a
whisper: ‘Yes, always alone.’ His tone was detached, as though
he were making a general observation, without a trace of
melancholy or regret. Yet Jacques felt certain that, just now,
the Pilot had some personal experience in mind.
‘Yes, indeed 1 know it,’ Jacques sighed, slowing down till
he actually stopped, as if brought to a halt by the dead weight
of unformulated thoughts that he was dragging after him.
‘It’s the curse of Babel ! Men of the same age, the same way of
living and the same ideas, can spend a whole day talking to
each other in the most sincere, plain-spoken way — and not
understand each other for a single moment, never once meet
truly heart to heart. As close as close can be, yet hopelessly
aloof. Like pebbles on the lake-side, always touching each
other, never uniting. And I sometimes wonder if human
speech, by giving us an illusion of agreement, doesn’t really
keep us more apart than bring us together.’
Glancing up, he saw that Meynestrel, too, had halted.
Standing on the bottom step, he was listening in silence to the
melancholy voice echoing in the cavernous hall.
‘Oh, if you only knew how sick to death I sometimes am
of — words !’ Jacques burst out passionately. ‘Sick of our eternal
palavers ! Sick and tired of all that — ideology !’
At the last word Meynestrel made a quick gesture with his
hand. ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘Talking should always lead to
action. But, so long as it’s impossible to act, merely to talk is
better than doing nothing.’
He glanced towards the courtyard where Paterson and
Mithoerg were walking to and fro, waving their arms, con-
66
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
tinuing no doubt a ‘palaver’ that had begun upstairs. Then
his keen eyes settled on Jacques.
‘Be patient. This ideological phase is — only an episode.
An indispensable preliminary. It’s by way of debate that the
principles of a doctrine are stabilized. Without a theory of
revolution we can have no revolutionary movement. No
leaders. Our “ideology” annoys you. Yes, to our successors
it will very likely seem an absurd waste of energy. But is that
our fault?’ He added in a breath: ‘The time for action hasn’t
come yet.’
Jacques’ attentive gaze seemed asking him to explain him-
self. Meynestrel went on speaking.
‘The capitalist system is still holding its own. There are
signs of wear and tear in the machine, but it’s still working
more or less efficiently. True, the proletariat is restive and
oppressed, but, when all is said and done, it isn’t dying of
starvation — yet. In this halting, broken-winded social order
that is living on its reserves of energy, what the devil do you
expect them to do, these men of vision who’re waiting for the
time to act! They talk. They keep their spirits up with theories !
They’re bursting with energy, and the only run they can give
themselves is in the field of ideas. For so far we haven’t got
to grips with actual events.’
‘Ah,’ Jacques sighed, ‘if only we could get to grips with
them !’
‘Patience, my boy ! It won’t last for ever. The flaws within the
system are showing up more and more. Causes of friction
between the nations are multiplying ; their competition for the
world’s markets has reached the danger-point. It’s a matter of
life and death ; the whole system is based on the assumption of
steadily widening markets. Which is absurd, for markets can’t
expand indefinitely. That means they’re for it when a crisis
breaks ! The world’s heading straight for a catastrophe, a general
smash-up. Only wait and see. Wait till the economic balance
of the world is thoroughly upset. Wait till machinery has
thrown more and more people out of work. Wait till bankruptcy
and ruin are rife, and no work’s forthcoming anywhere, and
the capitalist system finds itself in the position of an insurance
67
SUMMER, 1914
company all of whose policy-holders have been run over on
the same day! Then . .
‘Then?’
‘Then we’ll drop ideology. Then there’ll be no more palaver-
ing. We’ll roll up our sleeves because the time to act has come,
because at long last we can get to grips with solid facts.’ His
face lit up, then as suddenly grew dark. ‘Meanwhile we must
be patient.’ He looked round to see where Alfreda was. And
.though she was too far to hear him, he asked mechanically in
an undertone: ‘Isn’t that so, little girl?’
Alfreda had joined Paterson and Mithoerg.
‘Come to the Caveau with us to have something to eat,’ she
said to Mithoerg, without looking at Paterson. ‘He must come,
mustn’t he. Pilot?’ she cried gaily to Meynestrel. Which, for
Paterson and Mithoerg, implied: ‘The Pilot will pay for
everyone.’ ,
Meynestrel signified assent with a flutter of his eyelashes.
‘After dinner we’ll all go on together to the Salle Ferrer,’
Alfreda added.
‘Count me out,’ Jacques said . . .
The Caveau, a little vegetarian restaurant, was situated in a
basement, in the Rue Saint-Ours, behind the Promenade des
Bastions. This was the heart of the students’ quarter at Geneva,
and the restaurant was patronized principally by socialist
students. The Pilot and Alfreda often dined here, when they
did not return to Carouge for an evening’s work.
Meynestrel and Jacques walked in front, with Alfreda and
the two young men some yards behind them. The Pilot had
started speaking with the suddenness that was his wont.
‘You know, we’re extremely lucky in point of fact to be
living in this ideological phase. To have been born on the
threshold of a new era. You’re too hard on our comrades.
Personally, I think their youth and keenness atone for every-
thing, even their “palavers.” ’
A shade of melancholy, which Jacques failed to notice, flitted
across his face. He looked round to see if Alfreda was still
behind.
Unconvinced, Jacques resolutely shook his head. In his
68
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
moods of depression he was apt to judge the young men round
him with severity. In his opinion most of them thought on
crude, narrow-minded lines, the malice and intolerance of which
they cheerfully condoned. They systematically appUed their
intelligence to bolstering up these views instead of widening or
reshaping them. Many of them, to his thinking, were rebels more
interested in their personal grievances than in humanity.
Still, he refrained from criticizing his comrades in the Pilot’s
presence. All he said was :
‘Their youth? Well, I’d be more inclined to blame them for
not being young enough.’
‘Not young enough !’
‘Certainly. Their spirit of hatred, for instance, is a quality of
age. Little Vanheede’s right: love, not hatred, is the quality
of youth.’
‘Dreamer !’ Mithoerg, who had just joined them, exclaimed
in a low, emphatic voice; behind the large round glasses, his
eyes slewed round in Meynestrel’s direction. ‘You’ve got to
hate hard, if your thought’s to flame up into action,’ he added
after a moment, gazing now straight before him into the middle
distance. Almost immediately he went on in an aggressive tone.
‘Just as one’s always got to kill wholesale to win a victory. Thus
it is !’
‘No,’ Jacques rejoined composedly. ‘No hatred, and no
violence, please! You’ll never have me with you on those
terms.’
Mithoerg’s eyes lingered on him unamiably. Jacques, who had
half turned towards Meynestrcl, paused before continuing.
As Meynestrel made no comment, he broke out almost roughly :
‘ “You’ve got to hate!” “One’s got to kill!” — what do you
know about it, Mithoerg? Supposing a great revolutionary
leader brought off a bloodless victory — by working on men’s
minds — all your notions of revolution by violence would go by
the board.’
The Austrian was striding ahead a little apart fiom the
others, with a stern look on his face. He made no reply.
Jacques went on speaking, turning again to Meynestrel.
‘If in the course of history there’s always been so much
69
SUMMER, 1914
bloodshed associated with revolutions, that’s because the men
who led them had not planned them, thought them out enough,
in advance. They’ve always been more or less rough-and-ready
coups, rushed through in an atmosphere of panic by fanatics like
us, who made a fetish of violence. They called it revolution, but
they aimed no higher, really, than a civil war. I admit that
violence can’t be dispensed with when there’s been no planning;
still, I see nothing absurd in picturing another sort of revolu-
tion taking place in the civilized world of to-day — a gradual
revolution, the work of men who’re not in a hurry, men like
Jaures, men of wide views and culture. They’ll have had time
to work out their theories and draw up a scheme of progressive
action. I’d call them “opportunists” in the best sense of the
term, for they’ll have cleared the ground for taking over
power by a series of timely moves, by exploiting at the same
time all that can serve their ends : parliaments, trade unions,
municipalities, labour movements, strikes and so forth. Revolu-
tionaries, yes ; but I see them as statesmen, too, men who carry
out their programme with the authority, the breadth of view
and calm tenacity of purpose that come from thinking clearly
and knowing that time is fighting for them. It would all happen
in an orderly way, and they’d always keep control of the
march of events.’
‘ “Control of the marsch of events !” ’ Mithoerg snarled,
gesticulating wildly. ‘'Dummkopf! That’s not the way a new order
comes about ! Noways shall we picture it coming except under
pressure of a catastrophe, at a time of fierce collective Krampf,
when all men with rage are boiling.’ (At such moments the
thick, Teutonic burr in his voice was specially pronounced.)
‘Nothing really new can be done without the big push that hate
shall give. And, before building, there must first be a Wirbel-
sturm, a cyclone, that smashes everything, levels out all into
the dust !’ He uttered the last words with lowered brows, in a
tone of grim detachment. He looked up again. ‘Tabula rasa!
Tabula rasa!' The violent gesture accompanying the words
seemed to sweep away all obstacles, making the void before it.
Jacques took some steps in silence before replying.
‘Yes,’ he sighed, trying to retain his composure. ‘You — all of
70
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
US — Stand by the assumption that the idea of revolution’s
incompatible with the idea of order. We’re all fuddled with
heroic, bloodthirsty romanticism. But may I tell you what I
think, Mithoerg? There are days when I ask myself: What’s
really behind this general adhesion to a gospel of violence? Is
it only that violence is necessary if we’re to make good? No.
There’s another reason, too ; it’s because such notions pander to
our lowest instincts, to the beast that slumbers deep down in all
of us. We need only watch our faces in the glass ; and see the
way our eyes light up, our grin of cruel, barbaric exultation,
whenever we pretend to think that violence is indispensable.
The truth is that we hold by it for much less avowable, far more
personal, motives ; each of us has at the bottom of his heart
some old score to pay off, some grudge to satisfy. And to enable
us to relish this craving for revenge without a qualm, what
could be better than explaining it away as the acceptance of an
inevitable law?’
Offended, Mithoerg swung round on him. ‘Mein,’ he protested,
T don’t. . . .’
Jacques brushed aside the interruption.
‘Wait ! I’m not accusing any individual. I said “we.” I state
the facts, that’s all. The craving to destroy is stronger than the
hope of building up. For how many of us does not the revolu-
tion mean just this : not so much a step towards the regeneration
of society, as an opportunity for glutting that lust for vengeance
which would have a glorious run in street-fights, civil war, a
forcible seizure of the reins of power. What a field-day for
reprisals it would be, that day when, after blasting our way to
triumph, we in our turn imposed another tyranny, the tyranny
of our justice! In the heart of every revolutionary there is,
besides much else, the instinct of an “agitator.” No, don’t shake
your head ! Which of us can dare to say he is wholly immune
from the virus of destruction? Even in the best, the most
unselfish, loftiest-minded of us I sometimes have a glimpse of a
drunken bully skulking in the background.’
‘All quite true,’ Meynestrel put in. ‘But is that the crucial
question?’
Jacques quickly turned, hoping to catch his eye. Without
71
SUMMER, 1914
success. He had an impression Meynestrel was smiling, but
could not be sure. He, too, smiled — but at something he had
just remembered, the remark he himself had made a little while
before : ‘I’m sick of our eternal palavers !’
His eyebrows arched in scornful crescents above his spectacles,
Mithoerg seemed determined not to answer.
They had reached the Bourg-du-Four Square, and crossed it
in silence. The old slate roofs glowed in the declining light, and
the narrow Rue Saint-Leger lay in front like a deep, dark
ravine. Behind them sounded two young, high-pitched
voices: Paterson’s, Alfred a’ s. Jacques heard their laughter, but
could not catch the words. Several times Meynestrel had
glanced back towards them over his shoulder.
Without explaining the link between what he now said and
what he had been saying, Jacques remarked :
‘It’s as if the individual couldn’t enlist in the group and join
forces with it, without first discarding all his standards. . . .’
‘What standards?’ the Austrian broke in; his demeanour
implied that he was at a loss to see any connection between the
remark and what had gone before it.
Jacques hesitated; then ‘The standards of a decent man,’
he said at last, in a low, evasive tone as if he were afraid of
seeing the argument diverge into this new field.
There was a short silence. Suddenly Meynestrel’s voice rang
out stridently. ‘The standards of a decent man?’ An incompre-
hensible question, but put with animation, and J acques seemed
to discern a hint of emotion in the voice.
He had several times already detected, as he thought, in
Meynestrel’ s dry, matter-of-fact manner a nuance giving an
impression that that manner was less natural than studied ; that
it served to mask the anguish of a sensitive mind which had
found out all there is to be known regarding human nature
and, deep below the surface, mourned inconsolably its dead
illusions.
Mithoerg, who had noticed only the vivacity of the tone,
began to laugh, and clicked his thumb-nail against h& teeth.
‘And you, Thibault, haven’t that much political nous !’ His
tone implied that the discussion was closed.
72
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
Jacques could not repress an outburst of annoyance. ‘If
having political nous, as you call it, means . .
This time Meynestrel intervened.
‘Political nous, Mithoerg, what does it really amount to? It
means that one can bring oneself to use, in the class struggle,
methods which would disgust us, seem little short of criminal,
in private life. Isn’t that so?’
He had begun the remark in an ironic tone, but ended on an
earnest one, restrained though fervent. Then he began chuckling to
himself, his mouth shut, breathing in little puffs through his nose.
Jacques was on the verge of answering Meynestrel, but his
respect for the Pilot always held him in check. He addressed
Mithoerg instead.
‘A real revolution. . . .’
‘A really real revolution,’ Mithoerg thundered, ‘a revolution
to save the nations, however fierce she is, has no need to be
excused for !’
‘Yes? So the methods employed don’t matter a bit?’
‘Pre-cise-ly,’ Mithoerg approved, without letting Jacques
continue. ‘Action, it does not take the same road as your
imaginative speculations. Action, Kamerad, grips a man by
the throat. In action, ja, only one thing counts — to win! You
may think what you will, but for me the obj'ect, it isn’t to take
revenge. Mein, my object is to put man free. Against his will, if
necessary. With the guillotine. When you want to save a man
who is drowning in the river, you begin by banging him hard
on the head to make him let you save him nice and quiet. The
day when the struggle really has begun, for me there will be
one thing to aim at — to drive out, to smash the capitalist
tyranny. And for knocking out a Goliath so kolossal, one who
sticks at nothing to bring the people under his thumbs, I’m
not as simple as to pick and choose my methods of attack. To
crush out wicked, silly things, everything that crushes comes in
handy, even wickedness and silliness. If injustice can help, if
ferocity can help, then I will be unjust, ferocious. Any weapon’s
good enough for me, if it gives more power to my arm. In that
war, I tell you, anything’s allowed. Anything you will — except
being beaten.’
D*
73
SUMMER, 1914
‘No!’ Jacques cried out passionately, ‘Nol’
He tried to catch the Pilot’s eye, but Meynestrel had clasped
his hands behind his back and, his shoulders bowed, was
walking some little way off, alongside the houses, staring at the
pavement.
‘No!’ Jacques repeated. He was on the brink of saying:
‘That sort of revolution doesn’t interest me. A man who is
capable of such brutal, bloodthirsty acts, and of calling them
“acts of justice” — such a man, when the battle’s won, will never
regain his decency, his dignity, his respect for mankind, his
passion for fair-dealing, and his independence of thought. If
I’m all for the revolution, it isn’t to put madmen of that sort
on top !’ But all he actually said was :
‘No ! Because I know only too well that the violence you
exalt is a menace, at the same time, to the highest side of life.’
‘That can’t be helped. We can’t let ourselves be — how do you
say it? — hamstrung by the scruples of intellectuals. If what you
call the highest side of life has got to go, if the activities of the
mind have got to be for half a century kept under, it can’t be
helped. Like you, I regret. But I say : So be it ! And if, to become
truly efficient, I must first be blinded — “Out with my eyes!”
say I.’
Jacques could not help protesting. ‘No, I can’t agree. Don’t
say : “That can’t be helped !” Listen, Mithoerg.’ He addressed
himself to the Austrian, but it was for Meynestrel’s benefit that
he was trying to define his standpoint. ‘Don’t imagine I attach
less importance to our final goal than you do. If I protest,
indeed, it’s in the interests of that ideal. A revolution that’s
carried out in an atmosphere of lies, of cruelty and injustice
can only be a false dawn, it will do nothing for humanity.
Such a revolution carries within it the germs of its ultimate
decay. Nothing it achieves by such methods can be lasting.
Sooner or later its turn will come to perish. Violence is a
weapon of the oppressor. Never will it bring true freedom to
the nations of the earth. It can only install successfully a new
type of oppression. Let me have my say !’ he shouted, angered
at seeing Mithoerg on the point of breaking in. ‘I’m not blind
to the force you and those who think like you derive from this
74
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
theory of ruthlessness; perhaps I’d sink my personal distaste
for it, I might even turn ruthless myself, if I thought it would
lead to good results. But that’s just the point; I don’t believe
in its efficacity. I’m positive that no true progress can be
achieved by sordid methods. It’s sheer nonsense glorifying
violence and hatred as means to bring about the triumph of
justice and fraternity. It’s betraying, at the very outset, the
world-wide justice and brotherhood that we’re aiming at.
No. You may think what you like about it, but for me the
denial of all moral values is fatal to the true revolution, the
only revolution worthy of our utter, whole-hearted allegiance.’
Mithoerg was about to retort when :
‘Jacques, you’re an incorrigible little rascal !’ Meynestrel
broke in, in the high falsetto voice he sometimes assumed, and
which never failed to disconcert his hearers.
He had listened to the argument without intervening. The
clash of two conflicting temperaments always interested him.
These academic distinctions drawn between material and ideal
ends, between violence and non-violence, struck him as so
much beating the wind — perfect illustrations of the false
problem with ill-stated premises. But what was the use of
saying that?
Both Jacques and Mithoerg were startled into silence.
Turning towards the Pilot, the Austrian gazed for a moment
on the impenetrable face, and the approving smile he had
conjured up froze on his lips; he looked discomfited. He was
put out by the turn Jacques had given to the discussion; vexed
with Jacques, with the Pilot — and with himself.
After some minutes’ silence he deliberately slowed down, let
the other two go ahead of him, and joined Paterson and Alfreda.
Meynestrel took advantage of Mithoerg’s absence to move to
Jacques’ side.
‘What you’re after,’ he said, ‘is to purge the revolution of its
grosser elements, before it’s taken place. Too soon ! That would
prevent its ever taking place.’ He paused and, as though he
had guessed how galling the remark had been for Jacques, he
added at once, with a comprehending glance: ‘Still ... I
understand you very well.’
75
SUMMER, 1914
They continued walking down the street, in silence.
Jacques was musing on his upbringing, applying himself to a
review of his mental background. ‘A classical education.
Middle-class surroundings. They give a kink to one’s mind that
is never quite straightened out. For a long time I thought I was
born to be a novelist; in fact it’s only quite recently I’ve
abandoned that idea. I’ve always been so much more drawn to
looking on, to noting impressions, than to forming judgments
and conclusions. And obviously, for a revolutionary, that’s a
drawback.’ The thought distressed him. He rarely indulged in
self-deception — anyhow, not consciously. He felt neither
superior nor inferior to his comrades ; but he felt different from
them and, generally speaking, of less value as a revolutionary
agent. Would he ever be able, like them, to discard his personal
viewpoint, to sink mind and will in the abstract doctrines and
common activities of a party?
Abruptly he remarked in a low tone: ‘Is a man necessarily
disqualified for joining in the action of a group because he
clings to and safeguards his personal freedom of thought?
Surely, Pilot, that’s exactly what you do?’
Meynestrel did not seem to hear him. Still, after a few
moments, he murmured:
‘Individualist standards. Human standards. Do you think
the two terms are identical?’
Jacques’ eyes were still intent on his friend’s face, and his
look of silent interrogation impelled, it seemed, the Pilot to
make his meaning clearer. But when he spoke, the words came
almost reluctantly.
‘The great movement of humanity in which we are engaged
is beginning to effect a tremendous change, not only in the
relations between man and man, but at the same time — and to
an extent we still have no conception of — within the individual;
even in what he fancies are his natural instincts.’
He fell silent again, and seemed to withdraw himself into
his meditations.
76
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
9
Sunday^ June 28
NEWS REACHES GENEVA OF THE SERAJEVO CRIME
Mithoerg was walking with Alfreda and Paterson a few
yards behind, but without joining in their conversation.
The young woman had to take two steps to the long-legged
Englishman’s one, to walk level with him. She was chattering
away without constraint and keeping so close to her companion
that at every step Paterson’s elbow brushed her shoulder.
Tt was when the strikes were on,’ she was saying, ‘that I saw
him for the first time. Some friends from Zurich had persuaded
me to attend a public meeting. We were in one of the front rows.
He got up and spoke. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His
eyes, his hands. . . . There was a free fight at the end of the
meeting. I ran away from my friends and stood beside him.’
She seemed herself surprised by the memories she was recalling.
‘Since then I’ve never left him. Not for a single day. Not for
even two hours on end, I imagine.’
Paterson shot a hasty glance at Mithoerg, hesitated, then
murmured in a peculiar tone:
‘You’re his mascot.’
She laughed. ‘Pilot’s nicer than you. He calls me his “guard-
ian angel.” ’
Mithoerg hardly heard what they were saying. He was
following up in his mind his argument with Jacques. He had
no doubt that he himself was in the right. He appreciated
Jacques as a ‘Kamerad,’ and had even tried to make a friend
of him; but he severely condemned Jacques as a metnber of
the Party. Just now he was feeling a rankling animosity
towards him. ‘I should have flung some home- truths in his
face,’ he thought, ‘once and for all. Under the Pilot’s nose —
so much the better !’ Mithoerg was one of those who were the
most disconcerted by Meynestrel’s attachment to Jacques. Not
from any sordid jealousy; it vexed him, rather, as a sort of
77
SUMMER, 1914
injustice. He was sure that just now the Pilot had inwardly
been on his side, and Meynestrel’s equivocal silence had keenly
annoyed him. Obsessed by a craving for revenge, he hoped an
opportunity would arise for clearing the matter up. . . .
Meynestrel and Jacques, who were now some distance
ahead, halted at the beginning of the Promenade des Bastions,
whence a short cut across the gardens led to the Rue Saint-Ours.
The sun was setting. Behind the railings a golden glow still
hovered on the lawns. The close of this fine summer Sunday
had drawn a crowd of loiterers to the Promenade, which was,
like the Luxembourg Gardens at Paris, a favourite resort of
University students. All the seats were occupied and young
folk in cheerful groups were strolling up and down the avenues,
lined with trees, under which a certain coolness lingered in
the air.
Leaving Alfreda and the Englishman, Mithoerg walked
quickly up to the two men. ‘Still it’s a rather sordid attitude to
life,’ Jacques was saying, ‘to make such a fetish of material
well-being.’
Mithoerg looked him up and down, and deliberately, without
an idea of the topic of their conversation, cut across it.
‘What’s he after now? I’ll swear he’s ranting against the
“sordid materialism” of us revolutionaries,’ he snarled
aggressively.
Jacques, though a little startled, gazed at him affectionately.
He always took the tantrums of his Austrian friend good-
humouredly. He regarded Mithoerg as a staunch comrade; as
a little demonstrative, but exceptionally faithful friend. He had
realized that Mithoerg’s churlishness was due to the lonely life
he led, to an unhappy childhood and an hyper-sensitive pride,
under which, he suspected, lurked some latent sense of inferior-
ity or a mind in conflict with itself. Jacques was not mistaken.
The sentimental German had a secret grief ; conscious of his
ugliness, he morbidly exaggerated it to himself — and to such
a point that at times he felt utterly desperate.
Indulgently, Jacques explained.
‘I was telling the Pilot that quite a lot of us have a way of
thinking, of feeling, and of insisting on happiness, which is
78
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
absolutely capitalist. Don’t you agree? What does “being a
revolutionary” mean, if not first and foremost that one has a
special attitude of mind? That one has begun by bringing off
a revolution within oneself, and purged one’s mind of all the
habits that are relics of the old order?’
Meynestrel cast a quick glance at him. ‘Purged!’ he was
thinking. ‘What a quaint chap is our little Jacques! He’s
sloughed his bourgeois skin so effectively, and purged his mind
of habits, yes — except of that one habit, the most thoroughly
bourgeois of all: the habit of regarding the intellect as the
controlling factor.’
Jacques was still speaking.
‘Yes, I’m often struck by the importance, the unconscious
respect, that most of us still accord to material comfort.’
Obstinate as ever, Mithoerg broke in.
‘Really now, a little too easy it is to taunt with materialism
the poor devil who is starving and revolts because he wants a
bite to eat.’
‘Obviously,’ Meynestrel commented, and Jacques, too,
hastened to assent.
‘Nothing’s more legitimate, Mithoerg, than that sort of
revolt. Only, a number of us seem to think that the revolution
will have been achieved the day when capitalism has been
dethroned and the proletariat’s taken its place. But to install
a new set of profiteers in the place of those we’ve driven out,
wouldn’t be destroying the capitalist system, but only turning
it over to another class. And surely the revolution ought to be
something different from a mere class-triumph, even though
it’s the most numerous and most exploited class that’s put on
top. Personally, I’d like to see a more generous and general
triumph, a triumph of humanity in the widest sense — in which
all men, without distinction . . .’
‘Obviously,’ Meynestrel said again.
Mithoerg muttered : ‘Money-making, that’s the curse. To-day
it’s the one driving force behind all human activity. So long
as we haven’t rooted out that evil thing . . .’
‘That’s just what I was coming to,’ Jacques put in. ‘Do you
think it will be an easy matter to uproot it? When it seems that
79
SUMMER, 1914
even we can’t manage to extricate ourselves from that idea?
Even we, the revolutionaries !’
Probably Mithoerg was of the same opinion. But he was not
honest enough to own to it. He could no longer resist the
temptation of wounding his friend. With a laugh that was like
a snarl he sidetracked the question. . . .
‘ “We, the revolutionaries” ! But you, you’ve never been a
revolutionary.’
Startled by this personal attack, Jacques turned instinctively
towards Meynestrel. But the Pilot merely smiled, and it was
not the comforting smile that Jacques had hoped for.
He turned to Mithoerg. ‘What on earth are you so ratty
about?’ he stammered.
‘A revolutionary,’ Mithoerg exclaimed, with a bitterness that
he now took no pains to conceal, ‘is a man who believes. See?
You’re a man who thinks things over, blows hot one day and
cold another. See? You’re someone who has opinions; you’re
not a man with a Faith. Faith is a gift of heaven, so to speak.
It’s not for you, Kamerad. You have it not, and you’ll never
have it. No, I know you too well. What you like is wobbling
to one side, then to the other. Like the bourgeois taking it easy
on his sofa, smoking his pipe and juggling with the pros and the
cons. Thinking “What for a clever boy I am !” You’re just like
that, Kamerad. You rack your brains and reason things out
and poke your nose this way and that, to smell out the — the
“fallacies” as you call them. That’s your game, all the long
day — and mighty clever you think yourself, was? No, you’ve
no Faith!’ He had moved nearer Meynestrel. ‘Isn’t that true.
Pilot? Had he any right to say, “We revolutionaries”?’
Meynestrel smiled again, briefly, inscrutably.
‘But Mithoerg’ — Jacques was feeling more and more at sea —
‘what exactly have you got against me? That I’m not a bigot?
True enough I’ Little by little embarrassment was giving place
to anger, and this gradual change of mood gave him a certain
satisfaction. He added in a frosty tone: ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve
just been explaining to the Pilot how I stand. I must confess,
I don’t feel inclined to go over it all again.’
‘A dilettante, that’s what you are!’ Mithoerg roared. As
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SUNDAY, JUNE 28
always when he flew into a passion, the rush of saliva to his
mouth made him splutter out his words. ‘A ra-rationalist
playboy ! And think I : a Protestant. Yes, one downright
Protestant. Freedom of thought, of criticism, of moral judg-
ments and so further. Your sympathies are with us, I grant.
But you’re not with us striving towards one single end. And
think I : the Party has no use for ones like you. Timid folk who
always hesitate, and set up to find fault with the Party doctrine
instead of fighting like good soldiers for it. We let you people
come with us. Perhaps we’re wrong. Your mania for reasoning,
rationalizing everything, it is catching. And very soon everyone
will begin blowing cold and hot, and shillyshally-making,
instead of marching vorwdrts towards the revolution. You are
capable for once perhaps of doing a hero act, as an individual.
But what’s that, an individual act? Nothing! A true revolu-
tionary, he should accept not being a hero. He should accept
being just a little atom lost in the community. He should
accept being — a nobody! He should wait patiently for the
signal to be given to all; and only then he stands up and
marches with the rest. Ach, you, as a philosopher, you may find
that sort of obedience shameful for a brain like yours. But I
say : to have that sort of obedience one needs a braver, truer,
nobler soul than to be a playboy rationalist. And it’s only
Faith can give that courage. The true revolutionary, he has
that courage, because he has Faith, because he believes with
all his heart, without question. Yes, my Kamerad, that’s so.
And you need only look at the Pilot; he says nothing, but I
know he thinks like me.’
Just then Paterson shot forward like an arrow between
Mithoerg and Jacques.
‘Listen ! Listen ! What are they shouting?’
‘What’s happened?’ Meynestrel asked, with a quick back-
ward glance towards Alfreda.
They had crossed the Promenade and were coming into the
Rue Candolle. Three newsboys were running towards them,
zigzagging across the road, and yelling at the top of their voices.
‘Late Special! Political outrage in Austria.’
Mithoerg started. ‘In Austria?’
81
SUMMER, 1914
Impulsively Paterson dashed towards the nearest boy. But he
came back at once, his hand thrust limply in his pocket.
‘Haven’t enough money !’ he announced plaintively, smiling,
however, at the euphemism ‘enough.’
Meanwhile Mithoerg had brought the paper, and was
running his eyes over it. The others clustered round him.
'UnglaublichV He seemed stupefied by the news. He handed
the paper to the Pilot.
Rapidly, betraying not the least emotion, Meynestrel read
the summary.
This morning at Serajevo, capital of Bosnia, recently
annexed to the Austriail, Empire, the Austrian heir-
apparent, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the Arch-
duchess were murdered by a young Bosnian revolutionary
armed with a revolver, during an official ceremony.
‘It’s unbelievable !’ Mithoerg repeated.
10
Sunday, July 12
A MEETING AT MEYNESTREL’s. BOEHM AND JACQUES REPORT ON
THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK AT VIENNA
A FORTNIGHT later, Jacques came back from Vienna by
the day express, accompanied by an Austrian named Boehm.
A piece of seriously alarming news that Hosmer had confiden-
tially imparted to him the day before had led him to break off
his enquiries and hurry back to Switzerland, to notify
Meynestrel.
That same Sunday, July 12th, Mithoerg, at the request
of Jacques — who was disinclined to face his friends’ questions —
visited ‘Headquarters’ at about six in the afternoon. He ran
82
SUNDAY, JULY 12
up the stairs, countered the others’ greetings with a vague smile
and threading his way between the groups crowding the first
two rooms, made straight for the third, in which he assumed
the Pilot would be found.
And so it turned out ; in his usual seat beside Alfreda, facing
a dozen attentive listeners, Meynestrel was holding forth. His
remarks seemed to be directed more particularly to Prezel,
who stood in the front row.
‘Anticlericalism?’ he was saying. ‘Wretched tactics. See what
happened to your Bismarck, with his famous Kulturkampf. . . .
His persecutions only served to strengthen German clericalism.’
All anxiety, Mithoerg was trying his hardest to catch Alfreda’s
eye. He managed at last to make a sign to her, and moved
away to the window.
Prezel had put up some objection, which Mithoerg failed to
catch. Various interruptions rang out, and some members of
the group changed places and began talking amongst them-
selves. Alfreda took advantage of this to come and join the
Austrian.
Meynestrel’s incisive voice made itself heard anew.
‘To my mind, it won’t be that pig-headed anticlericalism, so
dear to the free-thinking bourgeois of the nineteenth century,
which will free the masses from the yoke of religion. Here again,
the problem is a social one. The foundations of religions are of
a social character. From the earliest ages religions derived their
chief force from the sufferings of oppressed mankind. Poverty
has always been the mainstay of religion. Once that prop is
gone, faith will steadily decline. When a happier era dawns,
the existing religions will lose their hold on men.’
‘What is it, Mithoerg?’ Alfreda asked in a low tone.
‘Thibault’s back. He wants to see the Pilot.’
‘Why didn’t he come straight here?’
‘It seems there’s trouble brewing over there.’
‘Trouble?’
She scanned the Austrian’s face intently. She was thinking
of Jacques’ mission in Vienna.
Mithoerg threw out his arms, as though to say he knew
nothing definite. For a while he stood thus, his eyebrows raised,
83
SUMMER, 1914
his eyes goggling behind the glasses, and the upper part of his
body swaying clumsily, like a bear-cub standing on its hind legs.
‘Thibault is with Boehm, a countryman of mine, who is
leaving to-morrow for Paris. Terribly important it is that the
Pilot shall see them to-night.’
‘To-night?’ Alfreda was thinking things over. ‘Very well,
come round to our place; that’s the best way.’
‘All right. Tell Richardley to come too.’
‘I’ll ask Pat as well,’ she added hurriedly.
Mithoerg, who disliked the Englishman, was on the point of
saying: ‘Why Pat?’ He signified assent, however, with a flicker
of his eyelids.
‘At nine?’
‘Yes.’
Without another word the girl went back to her seat.
Meynestrel had just cut Prezel short with an emphatic ‘Of
course !’ After a moment he spoke again.
‘The change won’t be brought to pass in a day. Nor in one
generation. But the religious impulses of the new humanity will
find an outlet, a social outlet. For the mystical aspirations of
institutional religion, social aspirations will be substituted. Yes,
the problem is of a social order.’
After catching Alfreda’s eye again, Mithoerg slipped out. . . .
Three hours later, accompanied by Boehm and Mithoerg,
Jacques alighted from the Carouge tram and proceeded on
foot to Meynestrel’s house.
Night had almost fallen, and the little staircase was in
darkness.
Alfreda opened the door.
Meynestrel’s dark form Wcis outlined, like a figure in a
shadow-play, against the background of the lighted room. He
took a quick step towards Jacques and asked in a low voice:
‘Anything new?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were the charges justified?’
‘To a considerable extent,’ Jacques whispered. ‘Particularly
as regards Tobler. I’ll tell you about it later on. . . . But
there’s something else I have to tell you first. We’re on the eve
84
SUNDAY, JULY 12
of very serious events.’ He turned to the Austrian whom he had
brought in with him, and added by way of introduction:
‘Comrade Boehm.’
Meynestrel held out his hand.
‘So that’s it, Comrade Boehm,’ he said with a hint of
scepticism in his voice, ‘you’ve important news to give us?’
Boehm met his eyes squarely.
‘Yes.’
Boehm was a Tyrolese, a little man in the thirties, with a
determined face. He wore a cap and, despite the heat, an old
yellow waterproof hung on his stalwart shoulders.
‘Walk in,’ Meynestrel said, showing the newcomers into the
room at the far end of which Paterson and Richardley were
awaiting them.
Meynestrel introduced the two men to Boehm.
The latter became aware that he had kept his cap on. This
flustered him for a moment; then he took it off. He wore
stout hob-nailed shoes which skidded on the heavily waxed
floor.
Alfreda, with Pat’s help, brought in some chairs from the
kitchen and placed them in a circle round the bed, on which
she seated herself, her notebook and pencil held primly in her
lap.
Paterson sat down at her side. Reclining with his elbow on
the bolster, he leaned towards her.
‘Any idea what they’re going to say?’
Alfreda made an evasive gesture. Past experience had led her
to mistrust such conspiratorial airs. As indulged in by these men
of action doomed for the while to inactivity, they were no more
than symptoms of an overmastering desire, perpetually frus-
trated, for the day to dawn when at last they could display their
mettle.
‘Shove up a bit,’ Richardley said in a familiar tone, seating
himself beside the girl. A blithe, almost martial fervour shone
in his eyes; but there was something artificial in his bravado,
as if he deliberately set up to appear strong-minded, well-
pleased with things, no matter what happened — on principle,
to keep himself in trim.
85
SUMMER, 1914
From his pocket Jacques drew two sealed envelopes, a big
one and a small one, which he handed to Meynestrel.
‘Those are copies of documents. This is a letter from Hosmer.’
The Pilot moved across to the one lamp in the room; it was
placed on the table and gave out a dim light. He opened the
letter, read it and instinctively looked round at Alfreda. Then,
after flashing a keen, questioning glance at Jacques, he laid
the two envelopes on the table, and sat down — to encourage
the others to do likewise.
When all seven of them were seated, he turned to Jacques.
‘Well?’
Jacques glanced at Boehm, dashed the rebellious lock of hair
from his forehead and said to the Pilot :
‘You’ve read Hosmer’s letter. Serajevo, the murder of the
Archduke. It all happened just a fortnight ago. Well, during
that fortnight there’s occurred in Europe, and particularly in
Austria, a succession of events that have been kept secret.
Events of such tremendous importance that Hosmer considered
it necessary to give warning immediately to every socialist
centre in Europe. He despatched comrades to St. Petersburg,
to Rome. Ruhlmann has left for Berlin. Morelli has been to see
Olekhanoff, and Lenin, as well.’
‘Lenin’s a dissident,’ Richardley murmured.
‘Boehm will be in Paris to-morrow,’ Jacques continued,
taking no notice of the interruption. ‘He will be at Brussels by
Wednesday; in London on Friday. As for me. I’ve been deputed
to explain matters to you. Because events really seem to be
moving fast. Hosmer, when leaving me, said — these are his
very words: “Be sure and explain to them that if things are
allowed to drift, Europe, within two or three months, may be
involved in a world war.” ’
‘On account of the murder of an Archduke?’ Richardley
sounded sceptical.
‘On account of an Archduke killed by Servians; by Slavs,
that is to say,’ Jacques went on, turning towards him. ‘I was
like you: miles and miles from having the slightest inkling.
But out there, I realized. . . . Anyhow, I had a glimpse of the
problem — and it’s infernally complicated.’
86
SUNDAY, JULY 12
He Stopped speaking, looked round the room, then fixed his
eyes on Meynestrel, and enquired hesitatingly:
‘Shall I tell it all, from the beginning, as Hosmer explained
it to me?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I suppose you know,’ Jacques began at once, ‘the efforts
made by Austria to create a new Balkan League? . . . What’s
that?’ he added, noticing that Boehm was fidgeting on his
chair.
‘I think,’ Boehm said in a slow voice, ‘that if you want to
explain the situation in the light of its causes, the best method
would be to go back a little further in your analysis.’
On hearing the word ‘method,’ Jacques smiled. He glanced
enquiringly at the Pilot.
‘We have the whole night before us,’ Meynestrel remarked
with a quick smile; then stretched out his stiff leg in front
of him.
‘Look here,’ Jacques said, turning towards Boehm, ‘you do
the job. You’ll certainly make a better business of a general
historical survey than I should.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Boehm said in all seriousness — which brought
a mischievous sparkle to Alfreda’s eyes.
He let the waterproof drop from his shoulders, carefully laid
it out on the floor beside his cap, and drew himself forward
to the extreme edge of his chair, in which position he remained,
the upper part of his body stiffly erect, and his knees wedged
together. The close-cropped hair made his head look round
as a billiard-ball.
‘You must excuse me,’ he said. ‘As a start, I shall have to
deal with the point of view of our imperialist ideology. That’s
the only way to bring out the underlying trend of Austrian
policy. To begin with,’ he went on after a moment’s reflexion,
‘one should know what the Southern Slavs are after.’
‘The Southern Slavs,’ Mithoerg put in, ‘consist of Servia,
Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Also the Hungarian Slavs.’
Meynestrel, who had been listening with the closest attention,
nodded approval.
Boehm went on with his discourse.
87
SUMMER, 1914
‘These Southern Slavs have been trying for the last fifty years
to join forces against us. The nucleus of the movement is Servia.
The idea is to gather round Servia for the purpose of building
up an independent Jugoslav State. In this they have the backing
of Russia. Since 1878 and the Berlin Congress, there has been
a ferocious enmity, a struggle to the death going on between
Russian Pan-Slavism and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And
Pan-Slavism is all-powerful in the minds of the leaders of Russia.
Still, as regards the secret intentions of Russia and her respon-
sibiUty for the coming troubles, I’m not sufficiently informed,
I can’t venture to express an opinion. I will only speak of my
own country. As for Austria — and here I take the standpoint
of the Imperialist Government — it’s only fair to say that this
coalition of the Southern Slavs is a genuinely vital problem.
If a Jugoslav coaUtion were set up at our borders, Austria
would lose control of the numerous Slavs who are now incor-
porated in the Empire.’
‘Obviously,’ Meynestrel muttered mechanically ; then, seem-
ing to regret this involuntary interruption, he gave a slight cough.
‘Down to 1903,’ Boehm went on, ‘Servia was under Austrian
rule. But in 1903 Servia staged a nationalist revolution, set
Karageorgevitch on the throne and gained her independence.
Austria waited for an opportunity to get even with her. And
so, in 1908, we took advantage of the fact that Japan had given
Russia the knock, and we coolly annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina,
a province handed over for our administration. Germany and
Italy were consenting parties. Servia was furious. Then came
the second Balkan War. Last year. You remember? Servia had
gained new territory in Macedonia. Austria wanted to put her
foot down. She’d brought it off on two occasions by sheer
boldness. But this time Germany and Italy didn’t back her,
and Servia was able to stand her ground and keep her win-
nings. So far, so good. But Austria has felt bitterly humiliated
ever since. She’s biding her time to take revenge. National
pride is very strong with us. Our General Staff is hard at work
engineering that revenge. So are our diplomats. Thibault was
speaking of the new Balkan League. That, in my country,
stands in the forefront of the year’s poUtical programme. This
88
SUNDAY, JULY 12
is what it consists of: a projected alliance between Austria,
Bulgaria and Roumania, so as to form a new Balkan League,
to work against the Slavs. Not only against our Southern Slavs,
but against all Slavs. Do you see the point? That means:
against Russia as well.’
He paused to collect his thoughts, and make sure he had
omitted nothing essential. Then he turned towards Jacques,
as if asking for his impression.
Alfreda, who was leaning back on Paterson’s shoulder, bent
her head to stifle a yawn. She found the Austrian terribly long-
winded and this history lecture more than tiresome.
‘Of course,’ Jacques put in, ‘whenever you think of Austria,
you mustn’t lose sight of the Austro-German bloc. Of Germany
and her “future on the sea,” which brings her into conflict
with England. Of Germany, commercially encircled, and on
the look out for new openings. The Germany of the Drang nach
Osten. Germany and her designs on Turkey, her plans to cut
off Russia from the Straits ; her interests in the Baghdad Rail-
way, the Persian Gulf, England’s oilfields, the road to India,
and the rest of it. It all hangs together. In the background,
dominating the situation, always we find the same two groups
of capitalist Powers up against each other.’
‘Obviously,’ Meynestrel put in.
Boehm nodded his assent.
A pause fell on the conversation.
At last the Austrian turned towards the Pilot and enquired
with the utmost gravity :
‘Have I put it correctly?’
‘You’ve made it very clear,’ Meynestrel declared emphati-
cally.
Praise from the Pilot was an unusual occurrence, and all
except Boehm were surprised. Alfreda suddenly changed her
mind, and began looking at the Austrian with more attention.
‘Now,’ Meynestrel proceeded, fixing his eyes on Jacques and
leaning back slightly in his chair, ‘let’s hear what Hosmer has
discovered, and what these new factors are.’
‘New factors?’ Jacques began. ‘Well, not precisely that. Not
yet anyhow. Merely symptoms.’
89
SUMMER, 1914
He drew himself up, with a quick movement that brought
his forehead into shadow, and now the yellow lamplight fell
only on the lower part of his face, the prominent underjaw,
and the wide mouth flanked with lines of anxiety.
‘Ominous symptoms, that point — in the near future, very
likely — to startling events. To be brief: on the Servian side,
a deep-seated popular irritation, due to the constant frustration
of their national ambitions. On the Russian side, an obvious
tendency to back up the claims of the Slavs. So true is this
that immediately after the murder of the Archduke, the Russian
Government, which is entirely under the thumb of the General
Staff and nationalist elements, allowed it to be stated by their
ambassadors that they would take a definite stand as the
protectors of Servia. Hosmer was made aware of this by infor-
mation received from London. On the Austrian side, there’s
bitter mortification in Government circles over their recent
failures, and serious anxiety as regards the future. In Hosmer’s
words, we are putting out into the unknown, freighted with
a high-explosive cargo of hatred, spite, and greed. The unknown
begins with that dramatic event of June 28th, the Serajevo
assassination. Serajevo’s a Bosnian town, the population of
which, after six years of annexation to Austria, has remained
loyal to Servia. Hosmer, personally, is rather inclined to think
that certain official Servian leaders directly or indirectly helped
to promote the crime. But proof of this is hard to find. In the
view of the Austrian Government, the murder, thanks to the
indignation it has aroused throughout Europe, provides an
unhoped-for opportunity. To catch Servia red-handed. To
settle her hash, once for all ! To restore the prestige of Austria
and, at one and the same time, to clinch the new Balkan League,
and thus enforce the hegemony of Austria in Central Europe !
Rather a tempting prospect, isn’t it, for the statesmen con-
cerned? In Vienna, accordingly, there was no hesitation
amongst the leaders. A plan of action was worked out forthwith.
‘The first thing was to prove Servia’s complicity in the out-
rage. Vienna promptly ordered an official enquiry to be started
at Belgrade and throughout the Kingdom of Servia. Evidence
had to be unearthed, at all costs. Up to the present, however,
90
SUNDAY, JULY 12
this first item of the programme seems to have been too much
for them. The most it has proved possible to do is to ascertain
the names of a few Servian officers mixed up in the anti-
Austrian movement in Bosnia. In spite of the urgent orders
they’ve received, the investigators have not been able to return
a verdict of “Guilty” against the Servian Government. Natur-
ally their report was suppressed. It was carefully withheld from
the Press. But Hosmer has been able to procure the findings.
They are here,’ he added, putting his hand on the big envelope
still lying on the table, its red seals glowing in the lamplight.
Meynestrel’s thoughtful gaze rested for a moment on the
envelope; then again he turned to Jacques,- who went on
speaking.
‘What did the Austrian Government do? They ignored the
report. That in itself would be enough to prove that they had
some secret end in view. They’ve allowed it to be thought —
indeed they’ve allowed it to be published— that the guilt of
Servia is a proved fact. The official Press has kept on working
up the feelings of the public. In that particular murder they
had a trump card. Mithoerg and Boehm can tell you about
it. Over there, the person of the heir to the throne is sacred
in the eyes of the people. At the present moment there’s not
an Austrian, not a Hungarian, but is satisfied that the Serajevo
murder was the outcome of a plot promoted by the Servian
Government and perhaps by the Russian Government too, as
a protest against the annexation of Bosnia. There’s not one
of them but feels aggrieved, and is eager for vengeance. That’s
exactly what was wanted in high circles. From the day fol-
lowing the crime everything possible was done to keep the
national pride at fever-pitch.’
‘By whom, do you think?’ Meynestrel asked.
‘By those in office. First and foremost by the Foreign Minister,
Berchtold.’
Here Boehm cut in
''Ach, Berchtold !’ He made a significant grimace. ‘To be able
to understand all this, you’ve got to know that fine gentleman,
and his ambitions, as we do ! Just think ! To crush Servia would
make him the Bismarck of Oesteneich ! On two occasions, already,
91
SUMMER, 1914
he fancied he’d succeeded. Both times the opportunity slipped
through his fingers. This time, he feels the chances are favour-
able. They mustn’t be allowed to peter out.’
‘Still, Berchtold isn’t Austria,’ Richardley demurred, peaking
his sharp nose towards Boehm with a smile. In every inflexion
of his voice there could be detected that sense of heart-felt,
thorough-going security which those who are young derive
from the possession of a coherent doctrine, a settled view of life.
^Ach,’ Boehm retorted, ‘but he has the whole of Austria in
his pocket! In the first place, the General Staff, and the
Emperor as well.’
Richardley shook his head.
‘Franz Joseph? That’s a bit hard to swallow. How old
exactly is he?’
‘He’s eighty-four years old,’ Boehm replied.
‘Just so. An old dodderer. With two unsuccessful wars behind
him. Yet he’s willing, you say, at the end of his reign, to embark
with a light heart on another one I’
‘Don’t forget though,’ Mithoerg exclaimed, ‘that he realizes
the monarchy, she is in mortal danger. Old as he is, the Emperor
is not truly certain he will still his crown be wearing when he
goes down to the grave.’
Jacques rose to his feet.
‘Austria, Richardley, is at grips with her domestic problems,
and they’re very serious ones. Don’t forget that. She’s a nation
made up of eight or nine ill-assorted, rival races. And the central
authority is growing weaker all the time. It looks as if Austria’s
bound to fall in pieces one of these days. All those groups pf
people forcibly incorporated with the Empire — Servians,
Rumanians, and Italians, and so on — are seething with unrest ;
they’re only waiting for a favourable opportunity to shake off
the yoke. I’ve just come back from there. In political circles,
both on the Right and on the Left, the prevailing view is that
there’s only one alternative to a complete break-up, and that
is War. That’s the opinion of Berchtold and his gang. And of
course the generals take the same line.’
‘For the last eight years,’ Boehm observed, ‘we have had as
Chief of the General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf, the tool of
92
SUNDAY, JULY 12
the military party and the bitterest enemy of the Slavs. For the
last eight years he has made no secret of his war-mongering
activities.’
Richardley did not seem impressed. With his arms folded,
bright-eyed — too bright, indeed — he watched each speaker in
turn, with the same complacent air of knowingness and
scepticism.
Jacques ceased to address his remarks to him, and, going
back to his chair, turned towards Meynestrel.
‘Consequently,’ he went on, ‘in the opinion of the leaders
over there a preventive war would save the Empire. It would
put an end to all party dissensions. An end to the agitation
of all those unassimilated nationalities. A war would restore
to Austria her economic prosperity and secure for her the
Balkan market which the Russians are trying to monopolize.
And as they claim to be able to bring Servia to her knees
within two or three weeks, what risks do they run?’
‘That’s as may be !’ Meynestrel rapped out.
The eyes of all swung round towards him. With a sombre,
far-away air he was staring at some vague point in Alfreda’s
direction.
‘But that’s not all . . .’ Jacques began.
‘There’s Russia!’ Richardley broke in. ‘And then there’s
Germany. Let’s suppose, just for a minute, that Austria attacks
Servia ; and let’s suppose — a thing that isn’t certain, but quite
on the cards — that Russia intervenes. Mobilization by Russia
means an immediate mobilization in Germany, automatically
followed by one in France. The whole of their charming system
of alliances comes into play; it’s a foregone conclusion. Which
is as much as to say that a war between Austria and Servia
would as likely as not lead to a world-wide conflict.’ He
glanced at Jacques and smiled. ‘And that, old man, Germany
knows better than we do ourselves. Is it likely, then, that, by
allowing the Austrian Government to have their way, Germany
would deliberately incur the risk of launching a European war?
No, Just think it out. The risk is so tremendous that Germany
will prevent Austria from taking action.’
Jacques’ face had grown tense.
93
SUMMER, 1914
‘Wait a bit,’ he said. ‘That’s just what justifies Hosmer’s cry
of alarm. There are strong reasons for believing Germany has
already pledged her help to Austria.’
Meynestrel gave a start. He kept his eyes riveted on Jacques.
‘This,’ Jacques went on, ‘is how it came about, in Hosmer’s
opinion. It would seem, in the first place, that in Vienna,
during the first few days after the murder, Berchtold met with
opposition in two distinct quarters : from Tisza, the Hungarian
Minister of State, a cautious man, with no liking for mailed-fist
methods; and from the Emperor. Yes; it seems that Emperor
Franz Joseph was reluctant to give his consent; he wanted
to know, before doing so, what William II would think of the
matter. Now the Kaiser was just off on a cruise. No time to
be lost, if he was to be reached. It now looks as if, some time
between July 4th and 7th, Berchtold managed to consult the
Kaiser and his Chancellor and to obtain Germany’s consent.’
‘Mere assumptions,’ Richardley declared.
‘Obviously,’ Jacques admitted. ‘But what gives weight to
those assumptions is what has been happening in Vienna during
the last five days. Let’s go into that. Last week, even in Berch-
told ’s set, there still appeared to be a certain amount of hesi-
tation; no secret was made of the fact that the Emperor —
indeed Berchtold himself — feared that Germany would object.
All of a sudden, on the seventh, there was a complete change.
That day (last Tuesday, to be exact) a big cabinet council,
a council of war in fact, was called in haste. As if they had
suddenly been given a free hand. As regards what was said at
that council, there was complete silence for forty-eight hours.
But no later than two days ago, things began to leak out; too
many different people had been let into the secret, as a result
of the various steps decided on at the meeting. I might add
that Hosmer has fixed up a wonderful Intelligence Service of his
own in Vienna. Hosmer always gets to know everything in
the end ! Well, at that council, Berchtold’s bearing was quite
different; it was as though he had a definite assurance in his
pocket that Germany would give unlimited support to a puni-
tive expedition against Servia. And he coolly submitted to his
colleagues a regular war plan, which Tisza alone opposed. The
best proof that Berchtold’s plan is actually a war plan, is that
94
SUNDAY, JULY 12
Tisza urged his colleagues to be content with merely humiliat-
ing Servia; he thought it would be good enough to win a
brilliant diplomatic victory. Well, he had the entire council
against him, and in the end he gave in, he came round to the
others’ way of thinking. What’s more, Hosmer stated positively
that, that same morning, the ministers quite calmly discussed
the question of ordering immediate mobilization. If they
refrained from doing so, it was solely because they thought it
wiser, vis-a-vis the other Powers, not to drop the mask till the
last moment. One thing’s certain: the plan put forward by
Berchtold and the General Staff has been adopted.
‘For obvious reasons it’s hard to know exactly what that plan
is. Still, some things are already known. For instance, that
orders have been issued to set on foot such miUtary preparations
as can be made without unduly attracting attention ; and that
covering forces on the Austro-Servian frontier are being held in
readiness. Within a few hours, at the first pretext that crops
up, they’ll occupy Belgrade.’ He ran his fingers quickly through
his hair. ‘And, to wind up, I’ll quote something that an assistant
of the Chief of Staff, the egregious Hotzendorf, is reported to
have said to some friends. Perhaps it’s only a piece of brag
indulged in by an old trooper ; still it’s indicative of the Austrian
leaders’ frame of mind. “The nations of Europe, one fine
morning before long, will wake up Jo find they’re ‘for it’ !” ’
II
Sunday^ July 12
A MEETING AT MEYNESTREl’s. BOEHM AND JACQUES REPORT ON
THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK AT VIENNA — continued
J A c 0, u E s fell silent, and at once all eyes converged
upon the Pilot.
He stood motionless, his arms folded, his pupils set and
shining.
95
SUMMER, 1914
For a while there was silence in the room. The same anxiety,
above all the same bewilderment, was manifest on every face.
At last Mithoerg’s gruff voice broke the silence.
‘Unglaublich!’
There was another pause.
Richardley said at last, in a low tone :
Tf really Germany’s behind it all . . . !’
The Pilot’s keen eyes shifted towards the speaker, but did
not seem to be observing him. His lips moved, and an_ incom-
prehensible sound broke from him. Alfreda, whose eyes had
never left his face, was the only one to catch what he had said.
‘Too soon !’
She shuddered, and unthinkingly nestled against Paterson’s
shoulder.
The Englishman gave her a quick glance. But, bending her
head, she shunned the question in his eyes. Indeed, she would
have been at a loss, should Pat have asked her, to explain that
shudder. It was so clearly the first time, this evening, that war,
till now a mere abstraction, had forced itself upon her imagina-
tion in such bold relief, with all its brutal realism. Yet it was
not Jacques’ revelations that had caused her to shudder; it was
Meynestrel’s ‘Too soon !’ Why? The remark was not one to
surprise her. She was quite aware of the Pilot’s belief that
Revolution could only com^ of a violent crisis ; that in the actual
state of Europe war was the most likely occasion for such a
crisis; but, even if war broke out, the proletariat being in-
sufficiently trained would not be in a position to transform an
imperialist war into a revolution. Was it this that had upset
her — the idea that if socialism were really unprepared for it a
war would mean mere fruitless slaughter? Or had it been the
tone of that ‘Too soon’? Yet there was nothing new to her in
it. Had she not long been inured to her Pilot’s lack of humane
feelings? One day he had surprised her into saying: ‘Your
attitude towards war is just that of the Christians towards
death ; their minds are so engrossed with what is to come after,
that they seem blind to the horrors of the act of dying.’ He
had laughed. ‘To a doctor, little girl, the pains of childbirth
are just part of the scheme of things.’
96
SUNDAY, JULY 12
She had brought herself — painful though it sometimes was —
to admire this deliberate detachment, as the outcome of the
strenuous and constant strivings of a man, of whose very human
weaknesses none was more aware than she. Indeed it raised
him, in her eyes, above the rest of men. And it always moved
her deeply to think that this ‘dehumanizing’ process was
prompted, after all, by a supremely human ideal: to serve
mankind more fully and to work more efficiently for the de-
struction of present social conditions, for the coming of a better
world. Why that shudder, then? She could not tell. Her long
eyelashes lifted, and her glance, slipping over Paterson’s head,
came to rest on Meynestrel with a look of trust. ‘I must wait,’
she thought. ‘He’s hardly said anything, so far. He’s going to
explain. And then everything will be cleared up, and I shall
see again how right, and how splendid he is !’
‘That Austrian and German militarismus, they want war, I’m
quite convinced,’ Mithoerg put in, with a toss of his shaggy head.
‘And that that militarismus has the backing of many German
leaders, of the big business, of Krupp’s, and of all the supporters
of the Drang nach Osten, I can also quite believe. But as to the
whole of the propertied class, neinl They will get the fright.
Their influence is great. They won’t let the militarists have
their way. They will say to the governments : “Stop ! It’s mad-
ness. If you touch off that dynamite, you shall all blow up at
the same time!” ’
‘But look here, Mithoerg,’ Jacques said, ‘if really the leaders
and their military parties are hand in glove about this war,
what will the opposition of your propertied classes amount to?
And if you accept Hosmer’s information they are hand in
glove.’
‘No one questions that information,’ Richardley broke in.
‘But all that can be said so far, is that there’s a threat of war.
Nothing more. Well, what is actually behind that threat? Is
it a real desire for war? Or is it only another bluff on the part
of the German chancelleries?’
‘I don’t think there’s any risk of a war,’ Paterson declared
stolidly. ‘You’re forgetting my country, good old England!
She’ll never allow the Triple Alliance to become all-powerful
97
E
SUMMER, 1914
in Europe.’ He was smiling now. ‘She sits tight, does England ;
that’s why people forget all about her. But she’s listening,
watching all the time, and if things take a turn that doesn’t
suit her, she’ll get a move on, sure enough. There’s lots of life
in the old girl yet, you know ! She has her cold bath every
morning and she does her daily dozen !’
Jacques was fidgeting impatiently.
‘You can’t get over the facts. Whether there’s areal desire
for war, or whether it’s only bluff, Europe will be up against
an alarming situation within a day or two. Well, what are we
to do about it? I agree with Hosmer. We must make a stand
against the war-mongers. More than that, we must at once
prepare our counter-attack.’
‘Yes, yes, I agree!’ cried Mithoerg.
Jacques turned towards Meynestrel, but was unable to catch
his eye. He looked enquiringly at Richardley, who nodded
approval, and murmured, ‘I too agree.’
Richardley declined to believe there was any real danger
of war. Still, he did not question the fact that this sudden threat
of it must cause a general upheaval in Europe, and he had
promptly seen to what account the Socialist International could
turn the situation. It would serve at once to rally the anti-war
forces and stimulate the revolutionary ideal.
Jacques spoke again.
‘As Hosmer puts it, the threat of a European war provides
us with a new and definite objective. What we’ve got to do
is to take up again the programme we sketched out two years
ago in connexion with the Balkan War, and to improve on
it. To find out, in the first place, whether there’s any chance
of holding the Vienna Congress at an earlier date. Theri we’ve
got to set on foot at once, in every country at the same moment,
a peace-campaign, working through official channels, and with
the utmost publicity. Speeches in the Reichstag, in the Chamber
of Deputies, in the Duma. Simultaneous pressure brought to
bear on all Foreign Ministers. Action by the Press. An appeal
to the nations. Mass demonstrations.’
‘And dangle the bogey of a general strike before the govern-
ments,’ Richardley put in.
98
SUNDAY, JULY 12
‘With lots of sabotage in the war factories !’ barked Mithoerg.
‘And bust up the locomotives and cut the fishplates along the
railroads, like they did in Italy !’
There was an exchange of thrilled glances. Had ‘zero
hour’ struck at last?
Jacques turned again towards the Pilot. A bright, fleeting,
frigid smile, which Jacques took for a sign of acquiescence,
flashed across Mcynestrel’s features like the beam of a search-
light. Suddenly elated, Jacques went on eagerly:
‘The strike, of course ! A general, simultaneous strike ! That’s
our trump card. Hosmer’s afraid the matter may be dealt with
at Vienna on purely theoretical lines. It’s up to us to go into
it again, from the start, on fresh lines. Cutting out mere theory.
Defining for each country the attitude to be adopted in such
and such a case. Avoiding a repetition of that muddle we made
at Basel. We must make sure this time of concrete, practical
results. Am I not right. Pilot? Hosmer would even like to get
the leaders to organize preparatory meetings before the actual
Congress. So as to clear the ground and to show the govern-
ments, right away, that the proletariat are fully determined,
this time, to stand up as one man against their bellicose
policies.’
Mithoerg laughed derisively.
^Ach ! You and your leaders ! What do you expect from the
leaders? For how many years have they been talking about
the strike? And do you suppose that this time at Vienna,
they’ll do any more than talk ?’
‘The times have changed,’ Jacques observed. ‘There’s the
threat of a European conflagration.’
‘No, no, cut out the leaders ! Cut out speeches. Direct action
by the masses, that’s the stuff! Mass action, comrade!’
‘That goes without saying,’ Jacques rej'oined. ‘Only, if you
want direct action, isn’t it terribly important that the leaders
should begin by declaring themselves plainly and emphatically?
Just think, Mithoerg, what an encouragement that would be
for the masses! Ah, Pilot, if only we had it now, that one,
world- wide international newspaper!’
‘ Traumerei !’ Mithoerg shouted. ‘What I say is : a fig for your
99
SUMMER, 1914
leaders, work upon the masses! D’you suppose the German
leaders, for instance, would ever agree to the strike? Not on
your hfe ! They’d say, as they did at Basel, “unmdglich, on account
of Russia.” ’
‘That would be disastrous,’ Richardley observed. ‘Really
disastrous. So in the last analysis, everything depends upon
Germany, upon the social-democrats.’
‘Anyhow,’ Jacques said, ‘they showed two years ago that they’re
quite able, when necessary, to make a stand against war. But for
them, that Balkan affair would have set all Europe ablaze.’
‘Don’t say “but for them” ; say “but for the masses.” As for
them, what did they do? Just follow the masses’ lead.’
‘But who was it organized the demonstrations of the masses?
The leaders,’ Jacques retorted.
Boehm shook his head.
‘So long as you have not even two milUon wage-earners in
Russia, and millions upon millions of moujiks, the proletariat
can’t be strong enough to rise against their government, and
the Czarist militarismus is a real menace for Germany, and the
social-democrats can’t guarantee a strike. Mithoerg is right;
at the Vienna Congress they’ll only agree “in principle,” as
they did at Basel.’
^Ach\ Do cut off your congresses!’ Mithoerg exclaimed
petulantly. ‘What / say is : again this time it’s action by the
masses which will carry the day. The leaders will follow. What
has to be done is to get the workers to rise everywhere, in
Austria, in Germany, in France, without waiting for their
leaders to give orders. To get together the good chaps at every
street corner, to make troubles all over the country, in the
railways, in armament factories, in the dockyards. Everywhere !
And force like that the hands of the labour leaders. And in the
same time we must set alight every revolutionary organization
in Europe. Sure I am the Pilot, he thinks like I do! Stir up
troubles upon all sides. In Austria first, as being the easiest.
Nicht wahr, Boehm? Excite still more all the nationalist plotters,
the Magyars, the Poles, the Czechs. Also the Hungarians and
Rumanians. And do the same all places at once. We can work up
again the strikes in Italy. Also in Russia. And if once the masses
100
SUNDAY, JULY 12
everywhere are in revolt, the leaders, they will — how do you say
it? — toe the Hnes !’ He turned to the Pilot. ‘Isn’t that so. Pilot?’
Thus challenged, Meynestrel raised his head. The sharp
glance he shot at Mithoerg and then at Jacques wandered
off in the direction of the bed, on which Alfreda was still sitting
between Richardlcy and Paterson.
‘Oh, Pilot,’ Jacques exclaimed, ‘if only we pull it off this
time, what a marvellous access of strength it will mean for the
International !’
Meynestrel’s reply was : ‘Obviously.’
A hint of irony, so fleeting that it required Alfreda’s watchful
eyes to notice it, played on the corners of his hps.
Apprised of Hosmer’s revelations and the strong reasons for
believing Germany would support the aims of Austria, he had
said at once to himself : ‘Here it comes, that war of theirs !
It’s odds on their bringing it off this time. And we’re not ready ;
we’ve not the slightest hope of coming into power in any country
in Europe. What’s to be done, then?’ His mind was at once
made up. ‘There’s no doubt whatever as to the proper course
to adopt. We must play on the pacifism of the people for all
we’re worth. As things are, that’s the best means at our disposal
for getting a hold over the masses. A war against war! If it
breaks out, we’ve got to convince the greatest possible number
of the men who go to the front, that this war has been let
loose on the world by Capital, against the will and against
the interests of the workers. They must believe they’re being
driven helplessly into a fratricidal struggle for criminal ends.
That seed, at least, whatever happens, will certainly bear fruit.
Rather a neat idea, that — infecting capitalism with a germ
that will destroy it ! What’s more, the war will be an excellent
occasion for bringing our leaders into the limelight and com-
promising them thoroughly in the eyes of the powers that be,
by obliging them to commit themselves up to the hilt. So carry
on, my young friends 1 Sound the trumpet of pacifism for all
you’re worth I It’s what you want to do, anyhow. We’ve only
got to let you have your head.’ He smiled inwardly, picturing
to himself the generous effusions of the peace-makers and
socialist-minded enthusiasts of every complexion. Already he
lOI
SUMMER, 1914
seemed to hear the high-pitched, emotional appeals of the star
speakers at the Left Wing demonstrations. Then, ‘As for us,’ he
murmured to himself, ‘and as for me . . He left the thought
unfinished. There would always be time for him to come back to it.
Half aloud he said :
‘That’s as may be.’
He met Alfreda’s earnest gaze and realized that all the otheis
had fallen silent, gazing at him, waiting for him to speak at
last. Without thinking, he repeated in a louder voice :
‘That’s as may be.’ With a movement of impatience he drew
back his leg under his chair, and gave a slight cough.
‘I’ve nothing more to say. I agree with Hosmer. I agree with
Thibault, and Mithoerg, and the rest of you.’
Running his hand over his clammy forehead, he stood up
ibruptly.
In the low-ceiled room, crowded with seats, he looked taller
than his wont. He took a few desultory steps along the narrow
space left free between the table, the bed and the legs of his
seated visitors. His eyes roamed over the faces of those present,
settling on none individually.
After pacing to and fro for a few moments, without speaking,
he halted. His thoughts seemed homing back from a far
country of the mind. They were all convinced he was going
to sit down again, to set forth a plan of action, to launch out
into one of those forceful, rather cryptic extempore speeches
to which he had accustomed them. But he merely murmured :
‘All that remains to be seen.’ With his eyes on the floor,
smiling, he made haste to add : ‘And all that, of course, brings
us nearer to our goal.’
Then, threading his way alongside the table, he stepped to
the window, pushed open the shutters, and gazed out into the
darkness. Bending his head a little, he added in an altogether
different tone, speaking over his shoulder :
‘How about getting us some nice cool drinks, little girl?’
Obediently Alfreda slipped out into the kitchen.
There was a feeling of constraint in the air.
Paterson and Richardley were talking in undertones, still
seated on the bed.
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SUNDAY, JULY 12
In the centre of the room the two Austrians stood arguing
in German. Boehm extracted a half-smoked cigar from his
pocket, and proceeded to relight it; his prominent underlip,
moist and full-blooded, gave his flat face a good-natured
expression, yet at the same time a look of rather gross sen-
suality, which made him seem different from the others.
Leaning forward with both hands on the table, Meynestrel
was re-reading Hosmer’s letter, which he had spread out under
the lamp. The light issuing from the top of the shade threw his
features into bold relief; his short beard seemed blacker than
ever, his complexion paler; his brows were knitted and the
eyelids almost completely veiled the pupils.
Jacques nudged his elbow.
‘Well, it’s come. Pilot, and sooner than you expected, our
chance of making good.’
Meynestrel nodded. Without looking up at Jacques, impas-
sible as ever, he agreed in a flat, perfectly toneless voice ;
‘Obviously.’ And proceeded quietly with his reading.
Jacques had a sudden feeling of discomfiture ; it struck him
that this evening a subtle change had come over, not only the
Pilot’s expression, but the Pilot’s bearing towards himself.
Boehm, who had to catch a train early next morning, was
the first to make a move. The others followed suit and filed
out after him, with a vague sense of relief.
Meynestrel went downstairs with them to open the street
door.
12
Sunday, July 12
meynestrel’ S REACTIONS TO THE THREAT OF WAR
Leaning over the banisters, Alfreda listened till the sound
of voices had died away. Then she went back to the flat and
began tidying up. But her heart was heavy and after a moment
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SUMMER, 1914
she crossed the hall to the kitchen, which was in darkness, and
resting her arms on the window-sill, gazed out into the night.
‘Day-dreaming, little girl?’ Meynestrel’s dry, feverish hand
fondled her shoulder.
She shivered ; then all at once asked in a frightened, childish
voice :
‘Do you really think, dear, there’s going to be a war?’
He laughed. She felt all her hopes foundering.
‘But surely we . . .?’
‘We? We’re not ready.’
‘Not ready?’ She misunderstood him, for that night all her
thoughts turned on the struggle to avert a war. ‘Do you really
believe there’s no way of preventing it?’
‘There’s no preventing it. That goes without saying!’ he
exclaimed. Any theory that the working class, as it then was,
could hold up the forces making for war struck him as absurd.
She guessed that in the shadow he was smiling, his eyes
glittering. Again she shuddered. For some moments they stood
in silence, pressing against each other.
‘But,’ she suggested, ‘mightn’t Pat be right? Even if we can’t
do anything, there’s England. . . .’
‘England? All your precious England can do is to postpone
matters — and perhaps not even that!’
Probably because he had detected an unaccustomed stub-
bornness in her attitude, the Pilot’s tone grew still curter.
‘Anyhow, that’s not the point. The important thing isn’t to
prevent war.’
She half rose, and turned towards him.
‘Then why ever didn’t you tell them so?’
‘Because, for the moment, that’s nobody’s business, little girl.
And because, just now, for practical reasons, we’ve got to act
as if that was the great thing.’
She said nothing; but that night she felt hurt, stung to the
quick — never had he so wounded her before — and up in arms
against him, she knew not why. And it came back to her how
once, in the early days of their liaison, he had flung at her,
all in one breath, with an impatient shrug: ‘Love? For us,
that hasn’t the least importance.’
What, she wondered, had any importance for him? Nothing,
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SUNDAY, JULY I 9
nothing except the Revolution. And for the first time she
thought: ‘That’s an obsession with him, the Revolution. He
doesn’t care a rap about anything else ; not about me, or about
my life as a human being, a woman. Nothing else weighs with
him ; not even the fact of being what he is — something different
from other men.’ It was the first time she had thought of him
as j'ust ‘different,’ and not superior, nobler than the rest of
mankind.
Meynestrel went on speaking, in an ironic tone. ‘A war on
war, little girl ! Well, let them carry on ! Let them have their
fill of stop-the-war meetings, strikes and demonstrations. For-
ward, the peace brigade ! Forward, the trumpeters ! Let them
bring down the walls of Jericho — if they can !’
Suddenly he drew away from her, spun round, and muttered
between his teeth :
‘But it’s not their trumpets that will bring those walls down,
little girl ; it’s our bombs !’
And as he limped away towards their bedroom she heard
that little breathless chuckle that always froze her heart.
For a long while she remained leaning at the window, gazing
out into the darkness. Faint sounds of rippling water came from
the Arve, across the silent quay, and the last lights in the houses
on the riverside were dying out one by one.
She did not move. Asked what were her thoughts, she would
have replied she had none. But two tears had welled up along
her eyelids, and hung trembling between the lashes.
13
Sunday^ July ig
ANNE DE BATTAINCOURT’s RENDEZVOUS WITH ANTOINE
After crossing the Esplanade des Invalides, the car swung
round into the Rue de I’Universite. It moved silently, but so
deserted were the streets under the blazing sun, so deeply sunk
105 E*
SUMMER, 1914
was Paris in its Sunday afternoon siesta, that the mild warnings
of the horn at the street crossings, even the sleek rustle of tyres
on the hot asphalt, seemed an indiscretion, an outrage on the
stillness.
When the car had crossed the Rue du Bac, Anne de Battain-
court took up her Pekinese from the seat beside her, where it
had been sleeping curled up in a ball, and leaning forward,
gently prodded with her parasol her chauffeur, a mulatto in
a white dust-coat.
‘Stop here, Joe. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
The car drew up beside the pavement, and Joe opened the
door. His eyes, more darkly lustrous than the patent leather
of his cap-peak, rolled this side and that like the eyes of a
mechanical doll.
Anne hesitated for a moment; could she count on finding
a taxi later on in these drowsy streets? How silly of Antoine
not to have taken her advice and moved, after his father’s
death, to the neighbourhood of the Bois ! With the dog under
her arm she sprang lithely out of the car. The desire to be
free had prevailed.
‘I shan’t need you again this afternoon, Joe. Go home now.’
Even in the shade the pavement was hot underfoot, and not
a breath of wind stirred. Above the roofs the sky was bathed
in silvery haze. Her eyes wincing at the glare, Anne walked
past blind house-fronts, carriage-gateways grim as the portals
of a jail. Laddie trotted lazily at her heels. Not a soul was out
of doors, not even one of these spindle-shanked little girls with
pigtails down their backs who sometimes on a Sunday were
to be seen playing in the street outside their cell-like homes,
and inspired Anne with sudden fancies to adopt them for three
weeks, take them to Deauville and regale them with buns and
brisk sea-air. No one was about. Like watchdogs moping in
their kennels, even the concierges had put off till nightfall the
ritual moment when to take the air, sitting astride their chairs,
upon their doorsteps. On that Sunday, the nineteenth of July,
the Parisians, worn out by the democratic rejoicings centering
on the glorious Fourteenth, seemed to have migrated from the
capital en masse.
106
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
With its roof still ringed by scaffolding, the Thibault building
was conspicuous in the street. Striped with veins of fresh cement
along its crannies, the old facade now wanted only a coat of
paint to renew its youth. The ground floor was hidden by
hoardings, plastered with many-coloured posters, that en-
croached upon the pavement.
Holding up the flounces of her wide silk skirt and wrapping
it tightly round her, Anne, followed by the little dog, picked
her way between the mounds of rubble, sacks of cement and
planks that littered the entrance. There was a cellar-hke
atmosphere in the vestibule, and the dampness emanating from
the wet plaster made her shiver as if an icy sponge had touched
her spine. Lifting his small black muzzle. Laddie stopped to
nose these most unusual smells. Smiling, Anne stooped and
picked up the tiny mass of warm, silken softness and held it
to her breast.
Once the glazed hall-door was open it seemed as if the
interior decoration had been completed. A strip of red carpet
which at Anne’s last visit had not yet been laid, led from the
door to the lift.
She stopped on the second landing and, by force of habit —
though she knew Antoine was away — dabbed her face with
powder before ringing.
The door opened diffidently ; Leon did not relish being seen,
as he was then, unceremoniously garbed in a striped waistcoat.
The long, glabrous face, crowned by a fluffy growth of yellow
down like a fledgling’s, with the arched eyebrows, drooping
nose and plump lower lip, had now that non-committal air,
at once obtuse and cunning, which was a defensive reflex with
him. He cast at Anne’s mauve frock and flowered hat a side-
long, rapid glance, that seemed to take in everything, in one
wide swoop of comprehension. Then he stood aside to let her
enter.
‘The Doctor is out, madam.’
‘I know,’ she said, putting down her dog.
‘I think he is downstairs, madam, with some gentlemen.’
Anne bit her lip. When Antoine had accompanied her to the
station on the previous Tuesday — she was returning to Berck —
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SUMMER, 1914
he had told her he was going to the country on Sunday after-
noon, for a consultation. During the six months their liaison
had lasted, she had on more than one occasion caught Antoine
misinforming her as to such small details of his life ; it was his
way of safeguarding his independence.
‘Don’t bother,’ she said, handing Leon her parasol. ‘I’ve only
come to write a note for you to give to the Doctor.’
Walking past the servant, she stepped on to the deep-piled
brown moquette which now carpeted the entire flat once
occupied by M. Thibault. The Pekinese went straight to
Antoine’s study door and stopped outside it. Anne opened it,
let the dog in and entered the room, closing the door behind
her.
The windows were shut and the blinds down. The room was
redolent of varnish and new upholstery, with another, older
smell of paint lingering in the background. She walked quickly
to the desk and, resting her hands on the back of the desk
chair, took stock of her surroundings. Her eyes were hard with
suspicion and her nostrils dilated as if she were scenting out
the secrets of the room. She was looking for a clue that might
throw some light on the life that Antoine led apart from her,
of which she knew so little.
But nothing could have been less revealing than the bleak
luxury of this room. Antoine never worked in it, and only used
it on consulting-days. Glazed book-cases, curtained with
Chinese silk that somehow gave the impression of concealing
empty shelves, ran half-way up the walls. An impressive writing-
desk lorded it in the middle of the room ; it was covered with
a sheet of plain plate glass, on whose inhospitable surface was
strewn a desk outfit in morocco leather — notepaper-cabinet,
writing-pad and blotter, all with a monogram inset. Not a
single letter, document or even book — except the Telephone
Directory. A vulcanite stethoscope, posted like an ornament
beside the crystal inkstand, inkless as yet, was the sole reminder
of the profession of the owner of the room. And even this
appliance did not seem to have been put there by Antoine
with medical intent, but by some interior decorator with an
eye for picturesque effects.
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SUNDAY, JULY I9
Laddie had settled down on his belly near the door, with
his tiny legs spread out, and his flaxen ringlets merged with
the pattern of the carpet. Anne glanced at him absent-mindedly,
then perched herself astride an arm of the swivel-chair from
which three afternoons a week Antoine dispensed his oracles.
For a moment she toyed with the fancy she was he, and felt
a subtle pleasure in it ; it was a revenge for the too scanty place
he had given her in his life.
From the writing-case she took the block of headed note-
paper which Antoine used for prescriptions, and began writing
with the fountain-pen she carried in her bag.
Tony darling, five days without seeing you — that’s my
limit. So this morning I took the early train. It’s four now.
I’m going to our place to wait till your day’s work is over.
Come to me there, Tony dear, as soon as you possibly
can. A.
P.S. — I’ll bring the makings of a little dinner, so we
shan’t have to go out.
Putting the note in an envelope, she rang the bell.
Leon entered. He had put on his livery. He patted the little
dog, then went up to Anne.
Perched on the chair-arm, swinging her leg, she was licking
the gummed strip of the envelope. She had a well-formed
mouth, a thick but nimble tongue. The scent with which she
drenched her clothes hovered in the room. Catching a curious
gleam in the man-servant’s eye, she smiled to herself.
‘There you are !’ She flung the letter on to the desk with
a quick gesture that set her bracelets tinkling. ‘Will you be
very nice and give him this the moment he comes in?’
She usually addressed him in this familiar tone when Antoine
was not there, and so naturally that Leon took it quite for
granted. There were so many secret, unavowed complicities
between them. When she called for Antoine before going out
to dinner and had to wait, she always chatted amiably with
Leon ; indeed his company was to her like a breath of congenial
air from younger days. Moreover, he never took advantage
of her affability ; the furthest he went on such occasions was
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SUMMER, 1914
sometimes to omit a deferential ‘Madam.’ When she gave him
a tip, he was gratified for being able to express his thanks by
a mere flutter of the eyelids, his heart immune from the least
nuance of class-hatred.
Stretching out a leg, she slipped her hand under her skirt
to pull up a silk stocking ; then jumped down from the chair.
‘I’m off, Leon. Where did you put my parasol?’
The best chance of finding a taxi was to walk up the Rue
des Saint-Peres to the boulevard. The street was almost empty.
A young man passed her, coming from the opposite direction ;
they glanced at each other casually, neither suspecting that
they had met before on a certain rather memorable day. They
could hardly have been expected to recognize each other. In
four years Jacques had greatly changed; the thick-set young
man with the care-worn face had neither the look nor the gait
of the boy who had once gone to Touraine, to attend Simon
de Battaincourt’s wedding. And though, in the course of that
curious ceremony, Jacques had gazed with interest at the
bride, he would have been hard put to it to recognize under
the make-up and in the shadow of the parasol the features
of the ‘sinister’ widow his friend Simon had married.
‘Avenue de Wagram,’ Anne said to the driver.
‘Avenue de Wagram’ meant for her ‘our place’ — a ground-
floor bachelor flat that Antoine had rented at the beginning
of their intimacy. The flat had a private entrance in a side-
street, enabling them to elude the concierge’s watchful eye.
Antoine had always refused to come to Anne’s house in the
Rue Spontini, near the Bois, though for some months she had
been living there in solitary freedom. When on Antoine’s
advice Huguette had been put in a plaster jacket and sent
to a sanatorium at Berck-sur-Mer, Anne had taken a house
near by, and it had been settled she would stay there with her
husband till the little girl recovered. An heroic resolution, by
which Anne had not been able to abide for long. It was Simon
— he had never cared for Paris — who had settled at the seaside
permanently with his step-daughter and her English governess.
His great hobby was photography, but he did a little sketching
and music-making as well; and he would sit up late at night
no
SUNDAY, JULY 19
reading books on Protestantism — an aftermath of his theological
studies. '
Anne meanwhile snatched at every pretext for being in Paris,
and limited her stays at Berck to five or six days each month.
The maternal instinct had never been strong in her, and in
the past she had regarded the constant presence of her
fourteen-year-old daughter as a handicap, not to say an
infliction. And now to this rankling animosity there was added
a sense of humiliation whenever she saw ‘Miss Mary’ wheeling
the child in her bath-chair along the sand-tracks between the
dunes. Anne might sometimes dream of taking anaemic little
girls off the streets and adopting them, but she found it quite
natural to neglect her own daughter. At Paris, anyhow, she
could put Huguette, and Simon, out of mind.
The car had entered the Avenue de Wagram when Anne
remembered about the ‘little dinner.’ The shops here were
closed, but she knew of a grocery near the Place des Ternes
that stayed open on Sundays. She had the driver take her
there, and then dismissed the taxi.
She took a childish delight in shopping. With the Pekinese
under her arm she strolled from one appetizing counter to
another, choosing first the things that Antoine liked — brown
bread, salted butter, smoked breast of goose, a basket of straw-
berries. For Laddie’s benefit as much as Antoine’s she added
aj*ar of cream.
‘Give me a slice of that, please !’ she added, greedily pointing
a gloved finger towards a terrine of humble pate de foie de pore.
‘That’ was a tit-bit for herself; she had a weakness for pig’s
liver pdte, but nowadays — except when she was travelling; at
a station buffet or a country inn — she had few chances of
gratifying so plebeian a taste. Nibbling a hunk of new bread
spread with a slice of the pink, greasy pdte, ringed with lard
and richly spiced with cloves and nutmeg, she felt on her lips
the savour of the days when she was a young Paris shop-girl ;
of the cold lunches she used to eat, all alone on a bench in
the Tuileries Gardens, amongst the pigeons and sparrows.
Nothing to drink — but a bag of cherries bought in the street
had quenched the thirst caused by the spices. And, to round
III
SUMMER, 1914
off the meal, when it was time to hurry back to the shop, there
had been a little cup of sweet, piping-hot coffee, drunk standing
at the bar of a cafe in the Rue Saint-Roch.
Lost in memories, she watched the shopman tying up the
parcels, making out the bill.
‘All alone. . . .’ For even in those days she had had an
intuition that her best chance of succeeding in life was to keep
secret and aloof— without friends, ties or habits — always avail-
able for a sudden change of fortune. Ah, if the old woman who
in those days used to prowl about the Tuileries Gardens with
a basket on her arm, sounding her clapper, selling sugar-wafers
and soft drinks, and telling fortunes ‘on the side,’ could have
predicted that one day the little shop-girl would be Madame
Goupillot, wife of the chain-stores magnate! Still, thus it had
come about, and to-day, seen in perspective, it all seemed
quite natural.
‘Your parcel, madam.’
Anne was conscious of the shopman’s eyes lingering on her
figure. She was getting more and more to enjoy the glancing
impact of men’s desire. This one was scarcely more than a boy,
with an ill-shaped but healthy-looking mouth, chapped lips
and a light down on his cheeks. She slipped a finger under the
string, and as she drew herself erect, bending her head a little
back, her grey eyes bestowed, in guise of thanks, upon the
youngster a coquettish glance.
The parcel was by no means heavy. She had plenty of time
in hand; it was only five. She put the dog down and started
back on foot.
‘Come along. Laddie ! A walk’ll do us good.’
She moved with long, lithe, swinging steps, and there was
a hint of arrogance in her bearing. For never could she recall
her past without a thrill of pride. She was conscious that her
success in life was wholly her own handiwork, due to her
indomitable will.
Looking back on her career impartially, as if it were an-
other’s, she was full of wondering admiration for the persistence
she had shown from her earliest days in clambering up from
the depths — like a drowning man with every fibre of his being
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SUNDAY, JULY I9
set to lift him to the surface. And it had been so as to rise the
better that she had, in the slow course of her chaste girlhood,
kept herself so j'ealously aloof from men. She had lived with
her father, a widower, and a brother older than herself. On
Sundays while her father, a plumber’s hand, was playing bowls
with his cronies, she used to go for walks with her brother
and his friends, in the Bois de Vincennes. One evening on the
way back, a young electrician, one of her brother’s set, had
tried to kiss her. She had turned seventeen and rather liked
the young man. But she had slapped him, and run straight
home by herself. After that she had refused to go out again
with her brother, and stayed at home on Sundays, sewing.
She had always been fond of everything concerned with
dresses. A woman who had been friendly with her mother and
kept a small fancy-goods shop, had taken her to serve at the
counter. But life had been depressing in the small suburban
shop, patronized only by the poorest class.
Then one day she had had the luck of getting a post as sales
girl at a branch of the Goupillot Stores which had just opened
at Vincennes. For two years she had spent her days furling
and unfurling lengths of taffeta and velvet, in close, almost
physical contact with the daylong crowd of shoppers, and
countering the amorous advances of shopmen and department
managers with friendly, non-committal smiles. Each evening,
a model of decorum, she went straight home and cooked the
family dinner. On the whole she had pleasant memories of
that phase of her life.
On her father’s death she had quitted the suburbs for a much-
sought-after post at the principal establishment, in the heart
of Paris, at which old Goupillot himself, the owner of the
business, sometimes put in an appearance. Then she had had
to play her cards well, to bring him to the marrying-point.
‘Play your cards well’ might have been her motto in life. Even
now . . . ! Was it not she who, at her first meeting with Antoine,
had set her heart on captivating him, had gradually broken
down his resistance and — won the rubber? He had never sus-
pected it, for she had been adroit enough to humour his
masculine vanity and make him fancy he had taken the
SUMMER, 1914
initiative. And she was too old a hand at the game to prefer
the vain delights of flaunting her power to the more truly
glorious satisfaction of wielding it in secret and plying all the
weapons of apparent weakness.
Her musings had brought her to the little flat. The walk had
made her warm and she found the cool silence of the rooms,
which had been closed all day, delicious. Standing in the
middle of the bedroom she quickly let fall all the garments
she was wearing and, running to the bathroom, turned on
both taps.
She had a thrill of pleasure in the glimpse of her slim naked-
ness in the mirrors; a soft white radiance, like the sheen of
a dead planet, filtering through the frosted panes, enhanced
the lustre of her skin. Leaning above the hissing jets of water,
absently she stroked the dusky hips that still were lithe as ever,
the breasts that had lost something of their firmness. When the
bath was half full, she put an exploring foot over the edge.
The water was no more than tepid : with a little sensual shiver
she let her body sink into it.
A white, blue-striped bath-towel hanging on the wall in front
of her brought a smile to her lips ; at a ‘little dinner’ they had
had together the other day, Antoine had comically draped
himself in it. And suddenly she remembered the mild ‘scene’
they had had that evening. When she had put a question to
Antoine regarding his liaison with Rachel he had answered
with a slightly acid look. ‘That’s the difference; I tell you
everything, / don’t make a mystery of my past.’
It was true she talked very little about herself. At the
beginning of their intimacy Antoine had commented one
evening, as he bent above her face, on her ‘Mona Lisa eyes.’
Nothing had ever delighted her more, and she had treasured
up the remark. Since then she had made a point of veiling
her past life in mystery, to maintain the glamour. She won-
dered now if that had not been a mistake. Perhaps Antoine
would have liked discovering behind the enigmatic, ‘woman
with a past’ the young shop-girl of Goupillot’s stores. She
decided to think it over. Her earlier life had been varied enough,
and she would not have to draw on her imagination to present
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
another picture of herself : the sentimental little midinelte she
had been at a certain period of her youth.
Always her senses tingled when she thought of Antoine. She
loved him for everything he was; for the self-confidence and
energy of which, perhaps, he was too consciously aware. She
adored him for his ardour as a lover, inclined though he was
to be a little too unsentimental, not to say callous, in his
dealings with her. And in an hour or so he would be with
her ....
Stretching her limbs, she let her head sink back, and closed
her eyes. Her tiredness seemed melting delightfully away into
the water. A sense of physical well-being permeated her. Above
her all was silent ; not a soul was stirring in the whole building.
The only sounds were the quick breathing of the little dog,
sprawling on the cool tiles, a faint clatter of roller-skates in
a neighbouring courtyard, and the measured cadence of water
falling drop by drop from the cold-water tap.
14
Sunday^ July ig
JACqUES VISITS ANTOINE
Standing at the corner of the Rue de l’Universit4, Jacques
gazed at the house where he had been born. A maze of
scaffolding made it unrecognizable. ‘Of course,’ he murmured
to himself. ‘Antoine had planned all sorts of alterations.’
He had made two trips to Paris since his father’s death, but
without revisiting the quarter where he had lived, or even
letting his brother know of his coming. Antoine had written
him several affectionate letters in the course of the winter.
Jacques had limited his replies to brief, if cordial, postcards.
SUMMER, 1914
He had not even made an exception in his reply to a long
business letter dealing with the estate left by his father. In
five lines he had categorically refused to take his share of the
inheritance, giving hardly any reasons for his refusal and asking
his brother never again to refer to ‘such matters.’
He had been in France since the previous Tuesday. On the
day following the meeting with Boehm, Meynestrel had said
to him; ‘Go to Paris. I may need your help there during the
next few days. For the moment I can’t say anything definite.
Take the opportunity of finding out how the land lies, and
just what’s happening at that end. I’d like to know the reactions
of the French left wing, especially Jaures’ group and the
Humanite crowd. If you don’t hear from me on Sunday or
Monday, you can come back. Unless you think you can be
of use at Paris.’
Till now he had not found time to look up Antoine; or,
perhaps, had shirked it. But events just now were taking such
an ominous turn that he had decided not to leave without
paying a visit to his brother.
Gazing up at the second floor, resplendent with new sun-
blinds, he tried to locate his window, the window of the room
which had been his as a little boy. ... It struck him there was
still time to retreat, and he hesitated for a moment; then,
making up his mind, he crossed the road and entered the
portico.
Everything had changed out of recognition. The dark wall-
paper patterned with fleurs-de-lis, the carved wooden banisters
and medieval stained-glass windows of the staircase as he had
known it in the past had given place to distempered walls,
wrought-ironwork, and large plate-glass windows. Only tlje
lift remained as it was. There was exactly the same sharp click,
the same metallic clang, the same oily rumble which had always
accompanied its upward start — sounds which Jacques could
never hear without an inward pang of distress, without hving
again through one of the most hateful episodes of his thwarted
youth : his homecoming after the escapade to Marseilles. It
was at the moment when Antoine led him to this lift, shep-
herded him into this prison-hke cage, that the fugitive had
1 16
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
realized that he was hopelessly trapped, defenceless. His father,
the Reformatory. Now Geneva and the International. To-
morrow, perhaps, war. . . .
‘Good day, Leon ! What a lot of changes ! Is my brother
at home?’
Leon gaped with amazement at this visitor from another
world. At last he spoke, in a slightly flustered tone.
‘The Doctor? No. Well-er-ycs; I’m sure he’s at home for
you, sir. He’s downstairs now, in the office. You’ll have to go
one flight down, sir. The door is open, you’ve only to walk in.’
On the landing Jacques saw a brass plate on the door, ‘Dr.
A. Oscar-Thibault. Laboratory."
So he’s taken over the whole house, Jacques thought — and
tacked on the ‘Oscar,’ too, as Father wanted.
The door opened from outside. Turning the silver-plated
handle, Jacques stepped into a hall flanked by three exactly
similar doors. He heard voices behind one of them. Could
Antoine be receiving patients, on a Sunday? Jacques moved
doubtfully towards the door.
‘Biometric observations . . . research-work in educational
establishments.’
The speaker was not Antoine. Then, suddenly, Jacques
recognized his brother’s voice.
‘The first thing is to collect test-cases. Then to classify the
data. In a few months’ time any neurologist, or specialist in
child pathology, or indeed educationist, should be able to find
here, in our records . . .’
Yes, that was Antoine sure enough. No mistaking his astrin-
gent, rather self-complacent tones, with the faintly mocking
lift at the close of each phrase. ‘Later on,’ Jacques said to
himself, ‘he’ll have exactly his father’s voice.’
Ceasing to listen, he stayed there for a moment, with his
eyes fixed on the new linoleum floorcloth. Again he felt a vague
impulse to go away. But Leon had seen him, and anyhow, as
he had come all this way, he had better see it through. He
threw back his shoulders and with the assurance of a grown-up
who feels no qualms about breaking in on the children’s party,
went up to the door and rapped on it briskly.
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SUMMER, 1914
Vexed by the interruption, Antoine rose and, frowning, held
the door ajar.
‘What the devil? . . . Oh! It’s you, Jacques!’ A glow of
happiness lit up his face.
Jacques, too, was smiling, yielding to a rush of the fraternal
affection which, all things notwithstanding, swept him off his
feet each time he met Antoine again, Antoine in flesh and
blood, with his determined look, square-cut forehead, stubborn
mouth. . . .
‘Come in, old chap.’ Antoine was gazing intently at his
brother, at the dark sunburnt forelock, those ever-changing
eyes and the vague smile that brought back to his mind his
Jacques as a small boy. Yes, it was indeed his dear youngster
standing there !
Three men with perspiring faces, collarless, in white un-
buttoned coats, were seated at a big table on which tumblers,
lemons and an ice-pail jostled sheets of paper and outspread
graphs.
‘This is my brother,’ Antoine announced, beamingwith delight.
The three men rose from their seats, and Antoine made the
introductions. ‘Isaac Studler. Rene Jousselin, Manuel Roy.’
‘Sure I’m not disturbing you?’ Jacques asked uncomfortably.
‘You are !’ Antoine gave his colleagues a cheerful grin. ‘Isn’t
that so? There’s no two ways about it, he is disturbing us
confound him! But — so much the better. It’s a case of force
majeure. Sit down, Jacques.’
Without replying, Jacques glanced round the enormous room,
all the walls of which were taken up by shelves, filled with rows
of brand-new, numbered filing cases.
Antoine was amused by his brother’s look of surprise. ‘I
expect you’re wondering where you are. You’re in our Record
Room, that’s all. How about a cool drink? A whisky and soda?
No? Roy must fix you up a lemon-squash, then,’ he decreed,
turning to the youngest of the three men. Roy was a typical
Paris student, with an intelligent face and bright, attentive
eyes ; the eyes of a good pupil.
While Roy was squeezing a lemon over a tumbler half filled
with crushed ice, Antoine turned to Studler.
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SUNDAY, JULY I9
‘We’ll go into all that again next Sunday, old boy.’
Studler was noticeably older than the others; indeed he
seemed even Antoine’s senior. His name ‘Isaac’ might have
been given to match his profile, a beard that hailed from the
Arabian Nights, the rapt eyes of an Oriental seer. Jacques
fancied he had met the man already, in the days when he
was living with his brother.
‘Jousselin, please put these papers back into their files,’
Antoine continued. ‘In any case, we shan’t be able to make
a serious start while I’m busy at the hospital, and my holidays
don’t begin till August ist.’
Jacques listened. August . . . holidays! Something of his
surprise may have shown on his face, for Antoine, who was
looking at him, made haste to explain.
‘Oh, we’ve agreed all four of us not to take any holidays
this year — under the circumstances.’
‘I quite understand.’ Jacques’ tone and look were grave.
‘Why, it’s less than three weeks since the builders finished
work on the house, and none of our new departments is in
running order yet. In any case, what with my hospital work
and private practice, I couldn’t have found time before then
to get things going. But with two quiet months before us we’ll
do it easily.’
Jacques gazed at him in amazement. The man who could
speak thus had obviously noticed nothing in the present tension
of the world that might disturb the smooth course of his work,
or shake his confidence in the near future.
‘That surprises you, eh?’ Antoine continued. ‘But of course
you’ve no idea of our plans. We’re out to do something — some-
thing big, aren’t we, Studler? I’ll tell you all about it. You’ll
dine with me, of course? Now drink off your lemon-squash,
then I’ll show you round my new domain. I’d like you to get
an idea of our arrangements. Then we’ll go upstairs and have
a chat.’
Jacques was thinking: He hasn’t changed a bit. He’s always
got to be organizing, taking the lead. Obediently he finished
his lemon-squash and rose. Antoine was already standing up.
‘We’ll go down to the laboratories first,’ he said. . . .
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SUMMER, 1914
Till M. Thibault’s death Antoine had led the normal life
of a promising young doctor. He had passed his examinations
in due order, had had himself placed on the Register and,
pending a vacancy in one of the hospitals, had built up a private
practice.
Suddenly his father’s death had conferred on him unlooked-
for power : the power of wealth. Antoine was not a man to miss
the golden opportunity.
He had no dependents, no costly vices. Only one passion :
work. Only one ambition : to become a leader of men. In his
eyes hospital work and private practice were merely a training-
ground. What really counted for him was his research- work
in juvenile pathology. And so no sooner did he realize he was
a rich man than his already powerful vitality was vastly multi-
plied. One thought possessed him: to devote his wealth to
speeding up his rise in his profession.
His programme was quickly settled. The first thing was to
provide himself with the requisite equipment: laboratories,
a library, a staff of competent helpers. With money, everything
was feasible. He could even buy the brains and loyal service
of young, struggling practitioners, and, while ensuring them
a, comfortable livelihood, employ their gifts for the advance-
ment of his researches and their extension into new fields. His
thoughts had immediately turned to Studler — the ‘Caliph’ as
he was called in the days when they were fellow-students — a
friend of Dr. Hequet. He had always been aware of the
Caliph’s methodical mind, his intellectual probity and capacity
for hard work. Next, his choice had fallen on two young men :
Manuel Roy, a medical student who had worked under him
for several years at the hospital; and Rene Joussehn, an
analytical chemist, whose research-work on serums had already
brought him to the fore.
Under the guidance of an enterprising architect the whole
house had been completely transformed within a few months.
The ground floor now communicated with the one above it
by an interior staircase; it had been converted into a set of
laboratories equipped with the most up-to-date apparatus. No
detail had been scamped. Whenever some technical difficulty
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
arose Antoine’s hand went instinctively to the pocket in which
he kept his cheque-book. ‘Make out an estimate, please.’ The
cost he brushed aside. He set little store by money; much by
the success of his schemes. His lawyer and his banker were
shocked to see him squandering with such a will a fortune that
had been slowly amassed and prudently administered by two
generations of grands bourgeois. But Antoine had no qualms ;
he sold large blocks of shares, laughing, at the timid warnings
of his business advisers. In any case, he had drawn up his
financial programme, too. He had resolved to invest what
capital remained to him after these inroads in foreign govern-
ment stock and especially in Russian mines, on the advice of
his friend Rumelles, the diplomat. He reckoned thus to enjoy
an income which, according to his calculations, would be
approximately the same as that which M. Thibault, faithful
to safe investments with small yields, had been receiving on
the family capital when it was still intact.
The inspection tour of the ground-floor premises lasted nearly
half an hour; Antoine spared his brother no detail. He even
took him down to the former cellars, which had been converted
into one huge basement-room with whitewashed walls.
Jousselin had recently set up in it a malodorous stock-farrn,
with pens of guinea-pigs, rats and mice, and a frog-tank.
Antoine was in ecstasies, laughing every moment with that
full-throated laugh of juvenile exuberance which after long
years of repression had been released, for good, by Rachel.
‘A rich man’s child, showing his toys,’ Jacques thought.
On the first floor were the private studies of Antoine’s three
colleagues, a small operating-theatre, and the large room
serving as Record-Room and Library.
‘With that behind us we can get to work,’ Antoine observed
in a tone of grave satisfaction, as they were going up to the
next floor. ‘I’m thirty-three. High time to settle down to my
job in earnest, if I’m to leave something lasting behind me.
You know, old chap’ — he swung round on Jacques with the
rather forced abruptness he liked to display, especially to his
brother — ‘one can always do far more than one imagines. When
one wants something, something realizable, of course — and
I2I
SUMMER, 1914
personally I never aim at things that aren’t realizable — well,
when one really sets one’s heart on something . , .’ He left
the phrase unfinished, smiled complacently, and began walking
again.
‘How far have you got with your exams.?’ Jacques asked,
for something to say.
‘I floored the Hospitals exam, last winter. I’ve still to swot
up for the Fellowship — because one must be qualified as well
for a professorial post later on. Still — ^it’s a fine thing, of course,
being a good children’s doctor, like Philip, but I’ve come to
feel that’s not enough -for me; it wouldn’t give me scope. I
believe that it’s on the psychological side that medicine to-day
is going to make a great forward step. Well, I want to play
a part in that advance, do you see? I don’t want to be left
out when it happens. It’s not a mere accident that while I was
working for my last exam., I devoted so much attention to the
subject of defective speech in children. Child psychology is,
I’m convinced, only in its infancy. This is the moment to start
in. I propose next year to round off my studies of the connexion
between breathing exercises for youngsters and their mental
development.’ He swung round. On his face had suddenly
settled the look of the great savant whose superior knowledge
sets him above the ruck of ordinary mortals. Before putting
his key to the lock, he gave his brother a searching look. ‘What
a lot remains to be done in that field !’ he slowly said. ‘What
tangles to straighten out !’
Jacques said nothing. Rarely had Antoine’s way of seeming as
it were to grit his teeth on life, got on his nerves so violently.
Confronted with this level-headed young man in the thirties
who seemed so sure of having launched out on a flowing
tide, he realized with something akin to horror his own
lack of balance — and, even more keenly, the menace of
the storm brooding over Europe.
In his mood of hostility, he found the process of being shown
round Antoine’s flat particularly exasperating. Antoine preened
himself amongst its splendours, like a cock lording it in his
barnyard. He had done away with most of the walls between
rooms and completely changed the lay-out of the flat. Though
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
somewhat over-elaborate, the general effect was a success. Tall
lacquer screens partitioned off the two waiting-rooms into
small box-like recesses ensuring privacy for the patients waiting
their turn. Antoine seemed to take pride in this innovation —
which made the rooms seem like an Exhibition of Decorative
Art. He told Jacques that personally he attached little impor-
tance to such displays of opulence. ‘But,’ he explained, ‘it helps
to sort out my clientele — do you see? With fewer patients, I
have more time for my work.’
The dressing-room was a marvel of ingenuity and comfort.
As he took off his white coat, Antoine amused himself swinging
to and fro the gleaming doors of the wardrobe.
‘Everything’s within arm’s reach. That saves time, you see.’
He put on a smoking-jacket. Jacques observed that his
brother was dressing now with much more elegance than in
the past. Nothing was showy, but the white shirt was of the
finest linen, and the black coat of silk. This quiet spruceness
suited him very well, and he seemed to have grown younger,
lither, without losing anything of his robustness.
‘How at home he seems in all this luxury!’ Jacques thought.
‘He has Father’s vanity, the aristocratic vanity of the bourgeois.
What a class ! Really, one would think they regard as a proof
of their superiority not only their wealth but their habit of
“doing themselves well,” their taste for comfort and the best
of everything. They’ve come to see it as a matter of personal
merit, which gives them certain social rights. They find the
esteem they enjoy perfectly justified. Justified, too, their power,
and the subservience of others. Yes, they find it quite natural
to “possess the earth !” Equally natural that their possessions
should be shielded by the law against the greed of those who
have none. Oh yes, they’re generous all right! Provided their
generosity is only another luxury, a harmless extravagance.’
And Jacques recalled the precarious existences of his friends
in Switzerland. No extravagances for them — though, to help
the others, each was always ready to sacrifice his all.
Yet, as he gazed down at the bath, big as a miniature
swimming-pool and shimmering with light, he could not repress
a prick of envy. His bedroom at three francs a night was
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SUMMER, 1914
decidedly uncomfortable. A bath would have been delightful
in this heat!
‘Here’s my study.’ Antoine opened the door.
Entering, Jacques went up to a window.
‘Why, surely this used to be the drawing-room?’
Here for thirty-five consecutive years M. Thibault had been
wont to hold the family conclaves, in a dim, religious light
between the brocaded window-curtains and the heavily draped
doors. The architect had achieved an ingenious transfor-
mation; it was now a bright, bare, modern room, dignified
without being bleak, bathed in the light that flooded in through
three large windows divested of their former Gothic panes.
Antoine made no reply. He had been surprised to see the
letter from Anne, whom he believed to be at Berck, lying on
the desk. Opening it at once, he glanced through the contents
and his brows knitted. A picture had risen before him of Anne
in the familiar setting of their little flat, Anne in the white
silk peignoir half revealing her slim nakedness. Glancing in-
stinctively at the clock, he thrust the note into his pocket. . . .
Why should she want him just on an evening which, for once,
he had a chance of spending with his brother?
‘What?’ he asked. He had missed Jacques’ remark. ‘I never
work here. It’s my consulting-room. I stay mostly in my old
den. Come along.’
Leon approached them from the end of the passage.
‘Did you find the letter, sir?’
‘Yes. Bring some drinks, please. In the study.’
The study was one of the rare parts of the flat to seem
inhabited. Truth to tell, it gave an impression not so much
of work as of confused, multifarious activity. Still its disorder
rather appealed to Jacques. The writing-table was strewn with
memorandum slips, note-books, press-cuttings, and miscel-
laneous papers; hardly any space was left for writing. The
shelves were full of well-worn books, reviews with markers
between the pages, bundles of photographs, medicine-bottles,
and chemists’ samples.
‘Well, let’s sit down a bit.’ Antoine drew Jacques towards
a capacious easy-chair, and stretched himself full length
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
amongst the cushions on the sofa. He always liked to talk lying
down. ‘Lying or standing,’ he would say. ‘I leave the sitting
position to bureaucrats.’ He saw Jacques’ eyes rove round the
room, pausing on the Buddha on the mantelpiece.
‘Fine, isn’t it? It’s an eleventh-century piece, from the
Ramsay collection.’
His eyes lingered on his brother affectionately, then suddenly
grew questioning.
‘Let’s hear your news, for a change. Have a cigarette? What
brings you to France? The Caillaux case. I’ll wager — you’ve
been asked to write it up, eh?’
Jacques did not reply. His eyes were fixed on the Buddha’s
face, which, against the background of a golden lotus curved
like a sea-shell, seemed aglow with radiant serenity. His earnest
gaze shifted to his brother. In his eyes there was a hint of terror
and his expression was so sombre that Antoine felt uneasy ; some
new tragedy, he supposed, was darkening his young brother’s life.
Leon came in with a tray, which he set down beside the sofa.
‘You haven’t told me yet,’ Antoine said. ‘How is it you’re
at Paris? Staying long? What will you have to drink? Per-
sonally, I’m still addicted to cold tea.’
Jacques declined, with a fretful gesture.
‘Look here, Antoine,’ he said in a low voice, ‘is it possible
that over here you haven’t any notion of what’s threatening?’
Bending over the edge of the sofa, Antoine was holding
between his hands the tumbler he had just filled. Before
bringing it to his lips he was savouring the fragrance of the
tea, discreetly flavoured with rum and lemon. Jacques could
see only the crown of his head, the far-away, pre-occupied
expression of his eyes. Antoine was thinking of Anne, who must
be expecting him now ; he would have to ring her up before long.
Jacques felt inclined to get up and go away without further
explanation.
‘And what’s threatening?’ Antoine murmured, without
changing his position. At last, almost reluctantly it seemed,
he turned towards his brother.
For a moment they gazed at each other silently.
Then ‘A war,’ Jacques said hoarsely.
125
SUMMER, 1914
The telephone-bell sounded in the hall.
‘Yes?’ The smoke rising from his cigarette made Antoine
blink a little. ‘Those damned Balkan States at it again?’
He glanced through a newspaper every morning and was
vaguely aware that one of those incomprehensible ‘diplomatic
crises’ which periodically fluttered the political dovecotes of
Central Europe was in progress.
‘What we ought to do,’ he smiled, ‘would be to put a ring-
fence round those damned Balkan States and let them go on
cutting each other’s throats till they’re exterminated.’
Leon’s face appeared at the door.
‘You’re wanted on the ’phone, sir,’ he announced in a
mysterious tone.
‘That’s Anne,’ Antoine said to himself. And though there
was a telephone in the room, just beside him, he rose and went
to the consulting-room.
For a while Jacques stared at the door by which his brother
had gone out. Then suddenly, as though announcing an
irrevocable verdict, he said aloud : ‘The chasm between
Antoine and myself is . . . impracticable.’ (There were moments
when he felt a rageful satisfaction in declaring that the chasm
was ‘impracticable.’)
In the consulting-room Antoine snatched up the receiver.
‘Hullo! Is that you?’ asked a warm, rich contralto voice, its
natural vibrancy amplified still further by the microphone.
Antoine smiled across the void. ‘Bad news, darling. I was
just going to call you. I’m dreadfully sorry, but Jacques has
just rolled up. My brother Jacques. He’s come from Geneva.
Yes, quite unexpectedly. A moment ago. So you see. . . . Where
are you speaking from?’
The voice, coaxingly : ‘Why, from our place, Tony dear. I’m
waiting for you here.’
‘Please forgive me, darling. I can’t leave Jacques just now.
You understand don’t you?’
No reply.
He called her name.
Still no reply.
‘Anne dear 1’
126
SUNDAY, JULY I9
Standing beside the huge, pompous desk, with his head bent
over the receiver, Antoine sent a vague, uneasy gaze toaming
across the brown carpet, the chair-legs, the lower shelves of
the bookcases.
‘Yes,’ at last the voice whispered back. And after a pause;
‘Will he — will he be staying very late?’
So heart-broken was the tone that Antoine felt deeply moved.
‘I don’t suppose so,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
‘Oh Tony, surely you don’t think I could bring myself to
start back to-night without having had even a teeny-weeny
glimpse of you? If you only could see the state I’m in! Every-
thing’s ready for you, dear — including our little dinner. . . .’
He laughed, and she, too, forced a laugh.
‘Try to picture how it looks this end. The little table in front
of the window. The big green salad-bowl full of wild straw-
berries.’ After a moment she began speaking again, quickly,
hoarsely. ‘Tony dear, do you really mean it? Can’t you possibly
come here right away — -just for an hour or so?’
‘No, darling. I can’t possibly get away before eleven, or
midnight. Do be reasonable I’
‘Not even for a minute?’
‘You don’t understand. . . .’
‘Yes, I do understand,’ she broke in sadly. ‘There’s nothing
to be done about it. What a shame!’ She paused, then gave
a little cough. ‘All right, it can’t he helped. I’ll wait for you.’
The faint sigh of resignation told Antoine what it had cost her
to accept her disappointment.
‘I’ll be with you later, darling.’
‘Yes Wait!’
‘What is it?’
‘No, it’s nothing.’
‘At eleven then.’
‘Yes, Tony dear.’
Antoine held the receiver to his ears for a moment. Anne, too,
at the other end, could not bring herself to put down the receiver.
After a hasty glance round the room, Antoine brought his lips
close to the mouthpiece and made the sound of a kiss. Then,
smiling, he rang off.
127
SUMMER, 1914
15
Sunday^ July ig
THE BROTHERS COMPARE NOTES ON THE EUROPEAN SITUATION
When Antoine came back to the room, Jacques, who had
not stirred from his arm-chair, was struck by the radiant expres-
sion of his brother’s face. It conveyed an intimate emotion
which he somehow fancied was of an amorous nature. Decidedly,
he thought, Antoine had greatly changed.
‘Sorry, old man. With that confounded telephone one never
has a moment’s peace.’
Antoine walked to the small table on which he had left his
glass, took a few sips, then went back to the couch and stretched
himself full length on it.
‘What was it we were talking about? Oh yes, you were saying
something about a war. . . .’
He had never found time to take an interest in politics, nor
wished to do so. His scientific training had got him into the
way of thinking that in the social, just as in the organic world,
everything is a problem and a hard one; that in every field
the seeker after truth needs to apply himself to his subject and
become something of an expert. And politics, as he saw it, was
a specialized activity widely removed from his own. To his
reasoned aloofness was added an instinctive repugnance for
politics. From its first page to its last the history of nations
was, to his mind, a chronicle of scandalous events, and he had
come to regard the very exercise of power as tainted with a
certain lack of scruple. In any case, it seemed to him that that
unflinching honesty which he, as a physician, held to be all-
essential, was not the rule, and perhaps not so necessary in the
field of politics. Consequently he watched the trend of public
affairs with a mistrustfully indifferent eye, as dispassionately
as he watched the activities of the Postal Service or those of
the Public Works Department. And if, in a smoking-room chat
128
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
— at the house of his friend Rumelles, for instance — he hap-
pened in a casual way to venture an opinion on the doings
of some minister in power, it was always from a definite, matter-
of-fact, dehberately unsophisticated standpoint ; after the fashion
of a passenger in a motor-bus, who wishing to praise or to
criticize the driver, takes notice only of the way he handles
the wheel.
Now, however, as Jacques seemeA to be so keen on it, he
was quite willing to start the conversation with an exchange
of generalities on European politics. And it was with the best
of intentions that, hoping to end Jacques’ silence, he went on
to ask:
‘So you really think another war is brewing in the Balkans?’
Jacques stared intently at his brother.
‘Do you mean to say that here in Paris you haven’t any
inkling of what’s been happening in the last three weeks? Of
all the signs and portents that are piling up? It isn’t just a
local Balkan war that’s on the way ; it’s the whole of Europe,
this time, that’s heading straight for war. So you people are
just carrying on as usual, without a thought for the near future?’
Antoine clicked his lips sceptically.
But what was it that suddenly brought to his mind the gen-
darme who had called, early one morning, last winter, just
as he was leaving for the hospital, to alter the mobilization
orders in his service book? It occurred to him that he hadn’t
even troubled to find out what his new duties were to be. After
the gendarme left, he had tossed the book into a drawer
and forgotten all about it. . . .
‘You don’t seem to understand, Antoine. We’ve come to a
pass when if everyone acts as you do, if everyone lets things
drift, there’ll be no chance of staving off disaster. Even as it
is, any little thing, a single shot fired by some hothead on the
Austro-Servian frontier, would start a war off.’
Antoine made no comment. He had received a slight shock.
A quick flush rose to his cheeks. The words just spoken had
suddenly jarred, as it were, some secret spot within him, which
so far had not made its presence felt by any special sensitivity.
He, like so many others in that summer of 1914, had experienced
129
F
SUMMER, 1914
a vague feeling of being at the mercy of some collective hysteria
— of a world-wide character, perhaps — brooding in the air. And
for a few seconds he was worried by a premonition he was
powerless to shake off. Very soon, however, he got over that
absurd feeling of discomfort and, his reaction driving him to the
other extreme as was so often the case, he found a certain
pleasure in contradicting his brother, though in a quite
amicable tone.
‘On that point, of course. I’m not so. well informed as you
are. Still you must agree that in so advanced a state of civiliza-
tion as ours in Western Europe, the mere idea of a general
conflict is almost inconceivable. For things to come to that
pass there’ld have to be, at any rate, a complete swing-round
of opinion. And that would take time, months and months —
years, perhaps — during which other problems would crop up
and act as counter-irritants, taking the sting out of our present
squabbles.’
He gave a genial smile, his equanimity entirely restored by
his own arguments.
‘These war-scares, you know, are nothing new, I remember
one twelve years ago, while I was on military service at Rouen.
When it comes to prognosticating a war or a revolution,
there’s never any lack of prophets of evil. And the queerest
part of it is that the signs upon which these pessimists base
their prophecies are invariably correct and genuinely alarming.
Only there you are: for some reason that hasn’t been taken
sufficiently into account or has been underestimated, events
don’t pan out as expected, and things somehow right them-
selves. And life goes on for better or for worse. And peace
likewise.’
Crouching forward, his forelock straggling across his fore-
head, Jacques heard him out impatiently.
‘This time, let me tell you, Antoine, it’s extremely serious.’
‘What is? That rumpus between Austria and Servia?’
‘That’s only a pretext, the “incident” they’ve been waiting
for — deliberately engineered, quite likely. But don’t forget the
agitation that’s been going on for years and years behind the
scenes in the over-armed countries of Europe. That capitalist
130
SUNDAY, JULY 19
society you seem to think so safely moored in peaceful waters*
is adrift, the prey of all sorts of secret, furious antagonisms.’
‘Hasn’t that always been the case?’
‘No ! Or rather, yes, perhaps. But ’
‘I know, of course,’ Antoine broke in, ‘that there’s that cursed
Prussian militarism driving every country in Europe to arm
to the teeth.’
‘Not Prussian militarism only,’ Jacques exclaimed. ‘Every
nation has its own brand of militarism, which it justifies by
the interests at stake.’
Antoine shook his head.
‘Interests at stake, I grant you,’ he said. ‘But however acute
it may be, competition between those interests might quite
easily go on for ages without leading to a war! I’m a believer
in peace, and yet to my mind conflict is an essential factor
of life. Fortunately we have other forms of conflict available
for the nations than a recourse to arms. That sort of thing may
be all right in the Balkans, but every government — I am
thinking of the Great Powers — even in the countries which
spend most money on armaments, obviously agrees that war
is the worst thing that could happen. I’m only repeating what
responsible statesmen themselves declare in their speeches.’
‘Oh, of course, when talking to their own people, they’re
bound to pay lip-service to Peace. But most of them are still
convinced that war’s a political necessity, something that’s
bound to happen now and again, and which, when it does
come, must be turned to the best account, and made as
profitable as possible. For it’s always the same old story: the
root of the whole evil is profit !’
Antoine was deep in thought. Just as he was about to voice
a further objection, his brother spoke again.
‘You see, Europe is just now under the control of half a
dozen of those poisonous “Eminent Patriots,” who under the
noxious influence of their General Staffs are shepherding their
several countries straight towards war. That’s what everyone
should realize. Some of them, the more cynically-minded, know
perfectly well what they’re about ; they want war, and they’re
preparing for it, like criminals plotting a new exploit, because
131
SUMMER, 1914
they’re convinced that sooner or later events will play into
their hands. This is notably the case with Berchtold, in Austria.
With Isvolsky and SazonofF in St. Petersburg. As for the
rest of them, I won’t go so far as to say they actually want
war, in fact they’re mostly scared of it. But they’re resigned
to war, because they think it’s bound to come. And no more
dangerous belief can take root in the mind of a statesman than
the belief that war’s inevitable. Those who hold that belief,
instead of moving heaven and earth to avert it, can think of
one thing only : how best to increase their chances of victory,
at all risks and as rapidly as may be. Such, no doubt, is the
case with the Kaiser and his ministers. It may be the case with
the British Government. It is certainly the case with France,
under Poincare.’
Antoine’s shoulders came up sharply.
‘You talk of Berchtold and Sazonoff. As for them I’ve nothing
to say. But Poincare ! You must have taken leave of your senses !
In France, apart from a few worthy lunatics like Deroulede,
is there anyone nowadays who dreams of military glory, or
revenge? France, in every fibre, from the highest to the lowest,
hates the idea of war. And if, by some absurd accident, we
came to be dragged into a European mix-up, one thing at
least is perfectly certain : no one could tax France with having
done anything to bring it about, or throw the slightest share
in the responsibility upon her shoulders.’
Jacques leapt to his feet.
‘Is it possible? Is this what you’ve come to? Can you seriously
mean — that?’
Antoine bent on his brother the steady, compelling gaze
which he bestowed on his patients, and which always filled
them with unbounded faith in him — as if a steady eye must
guarantee a perfect diagnosis.
Jacques looked him up and down disdainfully.
‘Really, your gullibility takes one’s breath away! The only
remedy would be to take you through the history of the French
Republic. Do you consider it can honestly be maintained that
French policy for the last forty years has been the policy of
a peace-loving nation. That France has any real right to
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
declaim against the misuse offeree by others? Is it your opinion
that our greed for colonies, and particularly our designs upon
Africa, haven’t helped to whet the appetites of others? That
we haven’t set them shameful examples of colony-grabbing?’
‘Wait a bit!’ Antoine said. ‘I fail to see that our penetration
of Morocco was in any way illegal. I can remember the
Algeciras Conference. It was under a mandate, neither more
nor less, from all the Powers, that we were entrusted, the
Spaniards and ourselves, with the mission of pacifying Morocco.’
‘That mandate we extorted by force. What’s more, the Powers
that gave it to us had the intention of using the precedent for
their own ends one day or other — as, by the way,. they did.
Do you suppose, for instance, that if it hadn’t been for our
Moroccan campaign, Italy would ever have dared to pounce
upon Tripoli, or Austria upon Bosnia?’
Antoine gave him a sceptical look, but he was not sufficiently
acquainted with the facts to dissent.
And now that Jacques was started, there was no holding him.
‘And what about our alliances? Was it to prove her peaceful
intentions that France entered into a military pact with Russia?
Every one knows that if Czarist Russia made an alliance with
Revolutionary France, it was in the hope of getting us, when
the time came, to back up her designs against Austria and
Germany. Do you suppose a man like Delcasse, a pawn in the
hands of the English diplomats, was working for peace when
he schemed to encircle Germany? The result was simply to
bolster up, to develop, to intensify that Prussian militarism
you talked of. The other result was a cut-throat competition
throughout Europe in preparing for war, putting up fortifi-
cations, building battleships and strategic railways, and all the
rest of it. In France, ten thousand million francs have been
voted for warlike purposes in the last four years. In Germany,
the equivalent of eight thousand millions. In Russia, six hundred
millions, borrowed from France for the purpose of building
railways that will enable her one day to move her armies
westwards, against Germany.’
‘ “One day,” ’ Antoine murmured. ‘Yes, one day, perhaps.
But a very distant day.’
133
SUMMER, 1914
Jacques took no notice of the interruption.
‘All over the Continent,’ he went on, ‘these competitive
armaments are being piled up in frantic haste, and they’re
ruining every country, causing the vast sums that ought to be
devoted to social welfare to be spent on preparations for war.
It’s sheer madness, and bound to end in disaster. And we
Frenchmen bear our share of the responsibility. Yes, we make
no secret of it ! Was it in order to satisfy the world of our good
intentions that we sent to the Elysee that stubborn patriot of
a Lorrainer, Poincare, whom every nationalist trouble-maker
at once set up as a symbol of jingoism ; whose election promptly
started our “revenge”-mongers off on a “lost provinces’’
crusade, and roused mercenary hopes across the Channel,
where the British shopkeepers would love to see their German
competitors laid by the heels, and, in Russia, whetted the
appetite of the Imperialists, whose everlasting dream is to
annex Constantinople?’
He seemed so carried away by his subject that Antoine could
not help laughing. He was quite determined not to let himself
be drawn into a discussion, and to keep his temper. He did
not want this conversation to be anything but a match of wits,
an intellectual parlour-game, with political ideas as the
counters.
He pointed ironically to the seat from which his brother had
risen.
‘Sit down, do !’
Jacques shot him a withering glance. Then, thrusting his
fists into his pockets, he sank back into the arm-chair.
‘As seen from Geneva,’ he went on after a moment’s silence,
‘I mean, in the international circles in which I live — details
become blurred and one sees the general lines of European policy
as it were in their true perspective. Well, as seen from there,
France’s evolution in the direction of war is as clear as daylight.
And in that evolution, whatever you may think, Poincare’s
election as President marked a decisive stage.’
Antoine was still smiling.
‘There you go again, with your Poincare !’ he exclaimed in
a bantering tone. ‘Of course, all / know of him is by hearsay.
134
SUNDAY, JULY ig
Among the legal fraternity, who are very hard to please, let
me tell you, he is universally looked up to. At the Quai d’Orsay,
too. Rumelles, who was on his departmental staff, speaks of
him as being a man whose heart is in the right place, a
scrupulous, diligent minister, straightforward, a lover of law
and order, averse from wild-cat policies in any shape or form.
It strikes me as simply ridiculous to suppose that such a man — ’
‘Not so fast, not so fast!’ Jacques broke in, and taking his
hand from his pocket, fretfully brushed back the lock that kept
on falling across his forehead. He was obviously trying to keep
himself under control. He was silent for a few moments, his
eyes half-closed; then he looked up.
‘There’s such a lot to say that I hardly know where to begin,’
he confessed. ‘As regards Poincare, one must, of course, dis-
tinguish between the man and his policy. All the same, to
understand his policy one has to understand the man — the
whole of him. Never losing sight of the fact that in that logic-
chopping fire-eater we also have a light-infantry officer, a man
with pluck and brawn, who has always shown a taste for
soldiering. “A devotee of law and order,” they say. “A man
whose heart is in the right place.” That much I can well believe.
Loyal. Dependable. Dependable as all obstinate people are.
They even say he is kind-hearted. Quite likely. He signs most
of his letters: ‘’’’Votre devoue,'' and in his case it is no empty
phrase ; he really enj'oys doing a good turn. He’s always ready
to fight against injustice, to remedy grievances.’
‘Come, now! All that’s likable enough, isn’t it?’ Antoine
put in.
‘Not so fast !’ Jacques repeated impatiently. ‘I’ve had occasion
to go into the psychology of Poincare pretty thoroughly, for an
article in the Beacon. Above all he’s a proud man, one who never
bends, who never gives way. Intelligent, of course, but with an
argumentative, logical cleverness, lacking in broadness of out-
look, without any real genius. And unbelievably stubborn. Quick-
witted but rather short-sighted; with an exceptional memory,
but a memory for details. All this goes to make a perfect
barrister — which, by the way, he has always remained — more
skilled in handling words than ideas.’
135
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine demurred. ‘If that’s all he ever was, how can you
account for his political success?’
‘By his capacity for hard work, which is simply marvellous.
And also by a gift for finance that’s rarely to be found in a
member of Parliament.’
‘By his honesty, as well, no doubt. That’s a quality which
always surprises people in such circles — and commands respect.’
‘As to his success,’ Jacques continued, ‘one may imagine he
was himself surprised at it, and that it gradually fired his
ambition. For he has grown ambitious. And there are heaps of
signs that he wouldn’t mind having to play a major part in
making history. Or, rather, that he wouldn’t mind being the
man who caused France to play a leading part in history, and
who gave France a new renown, with which his name would
be for ever linked. The most alarming feature is his conception
of national honour, his quasi-religious cult of patriotism. It’s
due, of course, to his Lorraine origin, his early years in a land
that had just suflTered mutilation. He belongs to a land and a
generation which for years and years have been looking forward
to the day of revenge, to the recovery of the lost provinces.’
‘That’s so,’ Antoine conceded. ‘But as for suggesting that
he aimed at coming into office so as to start a war . . .’
‘Just a minute,’ Jacques cut in. ‘Let me have my say. It
stands to reason that two and a half years ago, when he became
Prime Minister, or even eighteen months ago, when he was
sent to the Elysee, if anyone had come up to him and said:
“You’re bent on leading France into a war,” he’d have been
furiously indignant. Yet call to mind the circumstances in which
he was appointed head of the Government, in January 1912.
Whom did he succeed? Why, Caillaux. Now Caillaux, you’ll
remember, had just averted a war with Germany. He’d even
paved the way for a lasting Franco-German reconciliation. As
a matter of fact, it was just on account of that policy of con-
cessions made for the sake of peace that he was turned out
by the Nationalists. And if Poincare was able to step into his
shoes it was — I won’t say because he actually intended to go
to war, but anyhow because he was expected to adopt a
“national” policy with regard to Germany, a policy, that is,
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
in sharp contrast with the over-conciliatory attitude of a man
like Caillaux. The best proof is that the first thing he did was
to dig out that old fellow Delcasse, the man who had promoted
the “encirclement” of Germany, and put him in charge at the
Quai d’Orsay. And when he became President of the Republic
a year later, whose were the votes that gave him his majority?
The votes of such bourgeois capitalists as Joseph de hjaistre,
who hold that war is a biological necessity, a perfectly natural
event, deplorable of course, but none the less inevitable now
and again. Such people, I beheve, wouldn’t stir a finger to
start a war of revenge, yet for them it’s an inspiring possibility,
and they’d jump at the chance, if a pretext came their way.
We used to see them at pretty close quarters, in the old days, at
Father’s dinners, those diehards of our reactionary bourgeoisie.
Not to mention that all the old French parties of the Right
have never really had any devotion to the Republic, and there’s
always the idea at the back of their minds that a successful
war would give the victorious Government dictatorial powers,
enabling them to call a halt to the Socialist drive, and even
rid the country of its Republican demagogues. They indulge
in dreams of a disciplined, militarized France — a triumphant
France, armed to the teeth, and backed by a vast Colonial
Empire; a France in whose presence everybody else would
cringe. Can’t you imagine the appeal that dream has for our
“patriots”?’
‘Still, since he came into office,’ Antoine ventured to remark,
‘Poincare has never ceased to proclaim his peaceful intentions.’
‘What’s more,’ Jacques said, ‘I’m quite willing to believe he
means it — though actually such schemes for peaceful expansion
very soon turn into war aims when diplomacy fails to put them
through. But we’ve got to take another factor into account,
the consequences of which may be immense. For years past it’s
been a matter of common knowledge that Poincare is obsessed
by two incorrigible beliefs. First that a clash between Germany
and England is bound to come.’
‘Well, isn’t that what you were saying yourself just now?’
‘No. I didn’t say “bound to come.” What I did say was that
it seemed probable. Secondly, that ever since that Agadir
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SUMMER, 1914
business Germany has been bent on attacking France, and
steadily preparing to do so. Those are Poincare’s two obsessions,
and nothing will get them out of his head. And as he’s firmly
convinced, moreover, that force and the fear that force inspires
are the only means of ensuring peace, the conclusion’s obvious.
If there’s one chance left to France of avoiding an attack by
Germany, it’s by making herself more and more to be feared.
Therefore she must pile up armaments, must take up an un-
compromising, not to say aggressive stand. Once you realize
that, everything becomes plain — all Poincare’s activities since
1912, abroad and at home, are seen to be perfectly consistent.’
Leaning back amongst the cushions, Antoine was tranquilly
puffing at his cigarette. He was amazed by his brother’s excite-
ment, but he listened to him attentively. Jacques’ voice,
meanwhile, was gradually calming down, like a brimming
stream returning to its bed. On this familiar ground, which
gave him a brief sense of superiority over his brother, he felt
perfectly at ease.
‘But really, I seem to be giving you a history lecture; it’s
ridiculous,’ he said, forcing a smile to his lips.
Antoine gave him a friendly glance.
‘No, no, not a bit of it.’
‘I said just now, “both abroad and at home.” Well, let’s
begin with his foreign policy. It’s aggressively defensive, as he
intends it to be. Take our relations with Russia, for instance.
Germany is worried about the Franco-Russian Agreement, is
she? Well, let her worry! In the war Poincare sees coming,
Russia’s assistance is absolutely necessary to stave off a German
invasion. Therefore the thing to be done, regardless of German
susceptibilities, is to strengthen the Franco-Russian Alliance
and do so openly. But that involves appalling risks, for it involves
playing the game of Pan-Slavism, the warlike designs of which
on Austria and Germany are common knowledge. Little does
Poincare care for that! All things considered, he’d rather run
the risk of being drawn into a hazardous adventure than that
of any loosening of the ties between France and her one and
only ally. Nor was there any lack of persons ready to work
hand and glove with him in furtherance of that policy —
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Sazonoff, the Russian Foreign Minister, and Isvolsky, the
Czar’s Ambassador in Paris. To the Embassy in St. Peters-
burg he appointed his friend Delcasse, who for a long time
past had openly held the same views. The instructions given
him were to foster Russia’s warlike inclinations and tighten
the bonds between the two countries, so as to promote a policy
of force. No stone has been left unturned. We have some very
reliable sources of information in Geneva. As far back as his
first journey to St. Petersburg as Prime Minister, two years
ago, Poincare made no attempt to damp Russia’s hopes of
conquest. And his present visit, to which coming events may
lend a terrible significance, is intended, I think, to enable him
to verify on the spot, in consultation with the local leaders,
whether all is in readiness and the agreement in trim to take
effect the moment the signal’s given.’
Antoine propped himself on his elbow.
‘Look here, old man, that’s all guess-work really, isn’t it?’
‘Not a bit of it. It’s all been checked up from other sources.
Is Poincare being fooled by the Russians, or is he in collusion
with them? It makes little difference; in point of fact, his
Russian policy is enough to make your hair stand on end.
Perfectly logical, mind you ! The policy of a man with a cast-
iron belief that war is threatening his country, and the Russian
Army will be needed for a counter-attack in Eastern Prussia.
One should realize the part a man like Isvolsky is playing in
Paris with the permission and approval, if not the active
encouragement, of Poincare. Have you the least notion of the
amount of money that’s being paid to our Press by the Russian
secret service funds, to keep the war propaganda here in France
up to the mark? Did it ever occur to you that the French
Government not merely tolerates three millions of roubles
being used for buying up French public opinion, but actually
aids and abets the practice?’
‘You don’t say so !’ Antoine exclaimed in mock horror.
‘Just listen to this ! Do you know who distributes those
Russian subsidies amongst the leading French newspapers?
It’s our Finance Minister himself! And that’s a fact of which
we in Geneva have abundant proof. What’s more, Hosmer —
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SUMMER, 1914
he’s an Austrian who’s very well-informed as to European
affairs — is constantly affirming that ever since the last Balkan
Wars the Press in Western Europe has come to be almost
entirely in the pay of the Powers that are out for war. That’s
why public opinion, in those countries, is kept in such ignorance
of the abominable rivalries which, in Central Europe and in the
Balkans, have for the last two years been bringing war nearer
every day — for those who have eyes to see. But that’s enough
about the Press. There’s more to tell. Wait a bit! . . . One
could go on talking about Poincare for hours — I can’t explain
everything to you, offhand, like that. Let’s turn to his policy
at home. It’s on all fours with the other. Naturally enough.
To begin with, a general speeding up of armaments — a godsend
for the steel and iron industries, whose power behind the scenes
is simply tremendous. Next, the period of military service has
been increased to three years. (I suppose you followed the
debates in the Chamber? You remember Jaur^s’ speeches?)
Then, they’ve been working on public opinion. You were
saying, just now: “Nowadays no one in France dreams of
military glory.” Do you mean to say you haven’t noticed how
a jingoistic, war-mongering spirit has been gaining ground in
France during the last few months, especially amongst the
younger generation? Here, too. I’m not exaggerating, I assure
you. And this, too, is Poincare’s doing. He has his scheme.
He knows that when mobilization does come, the Government
will need the support of a public opinion heated to fever-pitch
and ready not only to accept and follow his lead, but to back
him up and cry him on. The France of 1900, the France of
the Dreyfus Affair, was too peace-minded. The Army was under
a cloud ; people had lost interest in it. They took security for
granted. Somehow, then, the nation had to be roused, alarmed.
The young folk, especially of the middle class, provided a
favourable soil for sowing the seeds of chauvinist propaganda.
And they were not long in striking root.’
‘That a certain number of youngsters have turned nationalist,
I won’t deny,’ Antoine broke in. He was thinking of his young
assistant, Manuel Roy. ‘But they’re a very small minority.’
‘A minority that’s growing larger every day. A very truculent
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
minority. Their greatest joy is forming up in groups, wearing
badges, waving flags, marching in military order. On the
slightest pretext, nowadays, you find them staging a demon-
stration round Joan of Arc’s monument or the Strasburg
statue. And there’s nothing more catching. The man in the
street — the petty clerk, the small shopkeeper — is not indefinitely
proof against such sights, such appeals to fanaticism. Particu-
larly as the Press, at the bidding of the Government, is working
on people’s minds along the same lines. It’s gradually being
hammered into the French nation that they’re in danger, that
their security depends upon their ability to use their fists, that
they’ve got to show their force, and put up with a huge
rearmament plan. The country has been deliberately infected
with what you doctors call a neurosis — the war neurosis. And
when once that collective apprehension, that frenzied panic,
has been injected into a nation, it’s child’s play to drive it into
the most suicidal folUes.
‘That’s how matters stand. Mind you, I don’t say: “One
of these days Poincare will declare war against Germany.”
No, Poincare isn’t a Berchtold. But if peace is to be maintained,
people must believe it to be possible. Acting on the principle
that a clash is unavoidable, Poincare has thought out and
carried on a policy that, far from staving off the risks of war,
has actually brought it nearer. Our armaments, keeping step
with the Russian preparations, have scared Berlin, as was only
to be expected. The Germany military party have improved
the occasion to speed up their own. The tightening of the
Franco-Russian Alliance has confirmed the morbid fear of
“encirclement” in Germany. So much so, indeed, that German
generals are openly declaring that a war is the only way out.
Some go so far as to say it’ll have to be started as a precautionary
measure ! And all this is largely Poincare’s doing. The one and
certain result, the diabolical result, of the Isvolsky-Poincare
policy has been to drive Germany into becoming what Poincare
fancied her to be : a war-mad nation, a beast of prey. We’re
moving in a vicious circle. And if within three months from
now France is involved in a European war — a war for which
Russia has paved the way, step by step, a war that Germany
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SUMMER, 1914
will perhaps allow to break out so as to take advantage of a
favourable opportunity — yes, if there’s a war, what will happen?
Poincare will shout exultantly: “You see what we were up
against. You see how right I was to insist upon the need for
a more powerful army and more reliable allies!” And he’ll
never guess that his psychology was at fault, that by playing up
to Russia and always prophesying the worst, he was, appearances
notwithstanding, one of the men responsible for that war.’
Antoine had made up his mind to hear his brother out, but
his private opinion was that Jacques’ tirade had little weight
behind it. He had detected several contradictions in its course.
His logical, matter-of-fact intellect rebelled against a line of
argument which struck him, on the whole, as feeble, badly
arranged. He was greatly tempted to return a verdict of in-
eptitude against his young brother whose views once again
struck him as superficial, not to say childish. Yes, Jacques was
a mixture of good-heartedness and inexperience. Even supposing
there were really some such vague menace looming in the
background, Poincare, whose influence, though as President
he stood outside party politics, was still predominant, would
not fail to dispel the stormclouds in good time. He was a man
to be trusted; he had given proof of great political acumen.
Rumelles thought no end of him. To fancy that a level-headed
man like Poincare could wish for a war of revenge, was mere
silliness, and no less silly was it to imagine that without wanting
it, simply because he supposed it possible or imminent, he
would behave in such a way as to make it inevitable. All that
was merest moonshine. The most elementary common sense
sufficed to show, on the contrary, that Poincare — and like him,
every French statesman — was stubbornly determined at all costs
to spare his country the ordeal of war. For scores of reasons.
First and foremost because he was aware, no one better, that
neither Russia nor France was in a position to be sure of
ultimate success. Didn’t Rumelles say so only the other day?
Jacques himself, for that matter, had tacitly admitted that the
Russian means of transport and strategic roads were inadequate,
since it was in order to remedy these defects that Russia had
just raised a loan of six hundred millions. As for France, the
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SUNDAY, JULY I9
law of three years’ military service, which was held to be of
vital necessity to bring her establishment up to the German
level, had only just been passed, and had not yet taken effect.
. . . Still, Antoine was not equipped with enough precise data
to enable him to demolish his brother’s arguments, as he would
have liked to do. So prudently he held his peace. The course
of events would certainly give the lie to Jacques, and to those
queer foreigners in Switzerland, the scare-mongers under
whose influence he now was.
Jacques had ceased speaking, and suddenly was looking quite
fagged out. He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his
face and the back of his neck.
He was well aware that his passionate harangue had not
convinced his brother. And he knew why. He had been foolish
enough to pour out, higgledy-piggledy, without attempting
to set them out in order, a medley of arguments on very different
lines — political, pacifist, revolutionary — which were for the
most part vague echoes of palavers in the ‘Talking Shop.’ At
that moment he, too, was cruelly conscious of the ineffective-
ness with which his brother secretly reproached him.
During the week he had been in Paris he had spent most
of his time enquiring into the outlook of the French socialists,
and had busied himself rather with their reactions to the threat
of war than with the problem of national responsibility.
His eyes wandered restlessly to and fro across the room,
without settling on any object. At last they came to rest on
his brother, who had remained without moving, his head
propped on his hands and his gaze fixed on the ceiling.
‘In any case,’ he began in an unsteady voice, ‘I really don’t
know why I let myself go like that. Obviously there’s more
might be said on the subject, but there are others who could
do it far better than I can. Let’s say I am unjust towards
Poincare, that I’ve an exaggerated view of France’s respon-
sibility. That’s not what really matters. What does matter is
that war is coming nearer. That it’s up to us, at all costs, to
avert that peril.’
Antoine gave an incredulous smile, which exasperated his
brother.
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SUMMER, 1914
‘You and people like you,’ he cried, ‘it’s positively criminal
the belief you have in your security! When at long last the
middle class makes up its mind to see things as they are, it
will be too late. Events are moving at breakneck speed. Read
to-day’s Matin, the issue of July 19th. It talks about the Caillaux
trial. About the summer holidays, seaside hotels, and the prices
they are charging. But you’ll find as well in the editorial columns
an article that wasn’t put in by accident, and begins with a
phrase potent as an explosive. '‘If war should break out. ...”
That’s how things stand. The Western World is like a powder
magazine. A spark let fly by chance would touch it off. And
people like you go on talking about “war” in the tone of voice
you had just now. As if you thought of “war” as just a word,
a trivial word, and uttered it accordingly ! When you refer to
war, none of you thinks of the unprecedented slaughter, the
millions of innocent victims it involves. Oh, if only your
imagination could shake off its apathy just for a moment!
Then you’d all be up and doing — you, Antoine, would be
amongst the first to move! Out to do something, somehow
to stave war off before it is too late !’
‘No !’ Antoine’s voice was calm. For a few moments he stayed
thus, lost in thought. Then ‘No,’ he said again. ‘That’s not
my line !’
Perturbed as he might be, for all his seeming calm, by the
issues his brother had just raised, he refused to allow any real
uneasiness to get a grip on him, to ruffle the even tenor of
the life he had built up, and on which his peace of mind
depended.
He drew himself up a little, folding his arms. ‘It’s “No” I
tell you !’ he repeated with a stubborn smile. ‘I’m not the sort
of busybody who goes out of his way to interfere in world
affairs. I’ve a job of my own to attend to, thank goodness !
I’m a chap who at eight a.m. sharp, to-morrow, will be on
duty at his hospital. There’s that phlegmon case in No. 4 bed ;
a peritonitis in No. 9. Every day I’ve a score of poor little
brats to attend to, and it’s my job to get them out of the mess
they’re in. That’s why I say “No” to everything else. A man
who has a profession can’t allow himself to be switched off it
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
to go and dabble in affairs he doesn’t know a thing about.
/ have my job cut out. It’s up to me to solve certain specific,
limited problems, which I’m competent to tackle, and on which
the future of a human life depends — of a whole family, quite
often. Now do you see? I’ve other things to do than fumble
with Europe’s pulse.’
His private opinion was that those who are responsible for
the nation’s welfare are by definition experts used to dealing
with international problems of all kinds, and that these experts
should be trusted blindly by non-experts like himself. And the
confidence he had in the French leaders he likewise extended
to the rulers of other countries. He felt an innate respect for
specialists.
Jacques was observing him with unwonted attention. He
suddenly wondered whether that famous mental balance of
Antoine’s, which in the past he had admired as a triumph
of reason, a victory of mind over the chaos of events, and which
had always inspired him with mingled envy and vexation, were
not merely the defensive armour of one of those active-sluggard
people who always keep on the move, rather like athletes in
perpetual training — just to prove to themselves of what stuff
they are made. Or, to put the matter more fairly, might not
Antoine’s pose be a happy consequence of the limited and,
truth to tell, rather restricted scope he had assigned to his
activities.
‘You talk of a war neurosis,’ Antoine went on. ‘That’s all
bunkum. I don’t allow the importance you do to psychological
factors. Politics is concerned essentially with practical matters,
hard facts. And in politics generous impulses count for even
less than in other fields of activity. So even supposing the
dangers you see ahead are real, there’s nothing we can do
about it. Absolutely nothing. Neither you, nor I, nor anybody !’
Jacques jumped up angrily.
‘That’s not true !’ he cried, moved by an indignation he was
now unable to control. ‘What! Faced with such terrible possi-
bilities, you’d have us believe there’s nothing to be done but
to bow to the storm, and carry on with our silly little jobs,
and meekly wait for the cataclysm to overwhelm us ! It’s per-
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SUMMER, 1914
fectly monstrous ! Fortunately for the nations, fortunately for
people like you, there are men on the watch, who won’t hesitate
to risk their lives, to-morrow, if needs be, to save Europe from
disaster.’
Antoine bent forward; his interest was aroused.
‘What men do you mean? Youself, for instance?’
Jacques walked up to the sofa. His irritation had subsided.
He gazed down on his brother, his eyes alight with pride and
confidence.
‘Is it news to you, Antoine, that there are twelve million
organized workers in the world?’ He spoke calmly, but beads
of sweat were forming on his forehead. ‘Are you aware that
the international socialist movement has behind it fifteen years
of struggle, fifteen years of loyal co-operation and continuous
progress? That there are to-day large socialist groups in every
Parliament in Europe? And that the twelve million supporters
of the movement are distributed over more than twenty
different countries? Yes, there are more than twenty socialist
organizations linking together all the ends of the earth in one
world-wide brotherhood. And do you realize that their ruling
thought, the nexus of the bond uniting them, is their hatred
of militarism, their firm resolve to struggle against war in every
shape or form, in whatever quarter it may arise? For war, you
know, is always a capitalist expedient to make the masses . . .’
‘Dinner is ready, sir,’ Leon announced, opening the door.
Cut short, Jacques mopped his brow and went back to his
chair. Then, when the servant had left the room, he said, by
way of conclusion, in a low voice :
‘Now, Antoine, perhaps you have a better idea why I’ve
come to France. . . .’
For a few moments Antoine gazed at his brother without
speaking. The sinuous line of his brows had stiffened to a
bar above the deep-set eyes, showing the tension of his thoughts.
‘Quite so,’ he observed at last, ambiguously.
There was a brief pause. Antoine had changed the position
of his legs, and was now sitting up on the sofa, propping himself
on his hands, and staring at the carpet. Then he gave a slight
shrug and rose to his feet.
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‘Well, let’s have dinner, anyhow,’ he said with a smile.
Jacques followed his brother without a word. He felt his
clothes sticky with sweat. Half-way down the passage, he
remembered his glimpse of Antoine’s bathroom. The temp-
tation was too strong to be resisted.
‘I say,’ he suddenly remarked, blushing like a child. ‘It’s
damned silly, but I’d love to have a bath. At once, I mean,
before dinner. Any obj’ection?’
‘Not the least, old chap !’ Antoine smiled. The absurd notion
flashed through his head that he was having a small revenge
on Jacques. ‘A bath, a shower, anything you like. I’ll show
you the way.’
While Jacques was luxuriating in the water, Antoine, who
had gone back to his study, took Anne’s letter from his pocket.
He read it once more, then tore it up, for he made a point
of never keeping any letter from a woman. He was chuckling
inwardly, but only the ghost of a smile flickered on his lips.
Then, going back to the sofa, he lit a cigarette, and settled
down again amongst the cushions.
He gave himself to thought — not about war, nor about
Jacques, not even about Anne. About himself.
‘I’m an utter slave to my profession, that’s a fact,’ he mused.
‘I never have time to apply my thoughts to anything else. This
business of keeping one’s mind engrossed with patients, or even
with medical research, isn’t real thinking in the sense I mean —
which is, or should be, trying to get the hang of things in
general. But I haven’t any time for that. I’d feel as if I were
cheating my work of what is due to it. Am I right, I wonder?
Is a professional career really the only thing that counts? Is
it even the whole of my own life? I’m not so sure. Under
Thibault, the physician, I feel there’s some one else; myself.
And that self of mine has been suppressed — for years and years.
Ever since I passed my first exam., perhaps. That day I stepped
into the cage, and it closed on me for ever. The man I was,
the man I used to be before I became a doctor — the man I
still am, when all’s said and done — is hke a seed buried too
deep; it’s given up trying to develop. Yes, its development
ceased with that very first exam. And all my brother-doctors
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SUMMER, 1914
are just the same. All men with a calling must be like that I
imagine. The best, of course. For it’s always the best who
sacrifice their personalities, who submit to the all-absorbing
tyranny of a profession. We’re rather like free men who have
deliberately sold themselves for slaves.’
His hand, thrust in his pocket, was fidgeting with the little
engagement-book he always had with him. Mechanically he
drew it forth and ran his eye over the page for the next day —
July 20th. It was crowded with names and memoranda.
‘By Jove, yes !’ he suddenly reminded himself. ‘It’s to-morrow
I promised Therivier to go and see his little girl again, at
Sceaux. And I must be back in my consulting-room by two.’
He crushed the stub of his cigarette in the ash-tray and
stretched his legs.
‘That’s Thibault, the medicine-man, cropping up again,’ he
smiled to himself. ‘Well, well! Life, after all, means action.
Not philosophizing. What’s the use of musing upon life? Every-
body knows what life is: an absurd jumble of wonderful
moments and infernal bothers I That point has been disposed
of, once for all. Living doesn’t mean to be perpetually calling
everything in question.’
Drawing himself up with a vigorous lunge forward of his
shoulders, he rose to his feet and took a few steps which
brought him to the window.
‘Life is action,’ he repeated, gazing vaguely down upon the
empty street, the closed shop-windows, the sloping roofs on
which the declining sun cast long shadows of the chimney-pots.
He was still fumbling with the little engagement-book in his
pocket. ‘To-morrow’s Monday ; we’ll be doing in that guinea-
pig for the little chap in Bed 13. It’s a thousand to one the
inoculation will turn out to be positive. A nasty business, losing
a kidney when you’re only fifteen. And then, there’s that con-
founded kiddie of Therivier’s. I’m out of luck, this year, with
all these septic pleurisy cases. Another couple of days, and if
there’s no turn for the better, we shall have to perforate the
rib. . . . Damn it all !’ he suddenly exclaimed, letting the curtain
fall back into place. ‘The “one thing needful” — isn’t it just
that: to do one’s job properly? And let life have its way.’
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
He moved back into the middle of the room and lit a cigarette.
‘Yes, life will have its way. . . . And Master Jacques will have
his say !’ Amused by the foolish jingle, he began singing the
couplet to a little tune. ‘Yes, life will have its way. And
Master Jacques his say . . . !’
I 6
Sunday^ July ig
JACQUES AND ANTOINE DINE ‘tETE-A-TETE’
The meal began with cups of cold soup, which the two
brothers drank in silence, while, white-coated like a barman,
Leon gravely sliced a melon on the marble-topped sideboard.
‘There’s going to be fish, some cold meat and salad,’ Antoine
announced. ‘That do you all right?’
In the new dining-room, with its bare panelling, blank
mirrors and a long sideboard that took up the full length of
the wall opposite the window, there reigned an atmosphere
of depressing, if majestic emptiness.
Antoine, however, seemed quite at ease in this spacious
setting. Just now his face wore an expression of the utmost
cordiality and good humour. So delighted was he at having
his young brother with him once more, that he could wait
without impatience for their conversation to resume its course.
But Jacques kept silence. He was paralysed by the room’s
lack of intimacy and the absurd distance between him and
his brother; they were separated by the entire width of a table
at which a dozen guests could have sat down in comfort. The
servant’s presence added to his constraint; every time Leon
came to change a plate he had twice to walk half the room’s
length, coming and going between the table and the dumb-
waiter; and Jacques found himself unwillingly following with
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SUMMER, 1914
his eyes the movements of the white, wraith-like figure gliding
to and fro. He hoped Ldon would disappear after handing
round the melon. But he lingered on, filling their glasses. ‘That’s
something new,’ Jacques said to himself In the past not to
pour out his wine, as and when he felt inclined, would have
been almost unbearable to Antoine.
‘This is a 1904 Meursault,’ Antoine said, raising his glass to
admire the limpid amber glow. ‘It’ll go well with the fish. I
found about fifty bottles of it in the cellar; but Father’d let our
cellar pretty well run out.’
Stealthily he was examining his brother, with more attention
now.
Jacques was in a brown study, gazing out of the open window.
Above the house-tops the sky glowed with a roseate sheen of
mother-of-pearl. How often on such summer evenings, in his
childhood, had he gazed out at those selfsame roofs and house-
fronts, those windows with their dingy awnings and closed
shutters, and rows of ferns in pots aligned along the balconies !
‘Tell me, Jacques,’ Antoine suddenly enquired, ‘How are
you getting on? Are you happy?’
Jacques gave a start and shot a wondering glance at his brother.
‘Yes’ — ^Antoine’s voice was affectionate — ‘I want to know
if you’re happy, anyhow.’’
An uncomfortable smile hovered on Jacques’ lips.
‘Oh, you know,’ he murmured, ‘happiness isn’t something
one can turn on like a bath-tap. I rather think it’s a gift.
Perhaps I haven’t got that gift.’
Then he caught a professional look in his brother’s gaze,
lowered his eyes, and kept silent.
He did not wish to resume the discussion broken off a little
while before, but his mind kept harking back to it. Opportunely
the sight of the family plate — the oval dish on which Leon
was serving him the fish, the sauce-boat with the handle shaped
like an ancient Roman lamp — diverted his thoughts to the
family dinners of his boyhood.
‘And how about Gise?’ he asked abruptly — as if, after months
of forgetfulness, she had suddenly come back to his mind.
Antoine jumped at the opening. ‘Gise? She’s still abroad.
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She seems happy; I hear from her now and then. She came here
on a visit, at Easter, for two or three days. She’s a young lady of
more or less independent means now, thanks to Father’s legacy.’
He vaguely hoped that this allusion might lead to a con-
versation about the family property, for he had never taken
seriously his brother’s rejection of his share. With the family
lawyer’s approval he had made arrangements for an equitable
partition of the estate and had instructed his bankers to
administer Jacques’ share, until such time as the latter retracted
his absurd decision.
But the allusion was completely lost on Jacques.
‘Is she still in the convent?’ he asked.
‘No. She’s left London and is living in the suburbs now, at
Kingsbury, in a sort of boarding-school — it’s affiliated to the
convent, as far as I can make out — with a number of other
girls of about her age.’
Jacques almost regretted having so rashly broached that
particular topic. He could never think of Gise without a certain
discomfort. There were too many reasons for believing that he
alone was responsible for the girl’s exile, for her flight from
everything that might remind her of the past, and the frustration
of her hopes.
Antoine went on with a quiet, indulgent laugh. ‘You know
how she is. It’s just the life for her. A sort of communal life
without any strict rules, in which her time’s divided between
good works and games. Yes,’ he repeated in a faintly hesitant
tone, ‘it seems she’s happy there.’
Jacques hastened to start his brother on another trail.
‘And Mademoiselle?’
During the previous winter Antoine had mentioned in a
letter that the old lady had moved into a Home.
‘I must admit,’ Antoine replied, ‘that I only know of her by
hearsay, through Adrienne and Clotilde.’
‘Are they still with you?’
‘Yes. I kept them as they got on so well with Leon. They
never miss going to visit Mademoiselle on the first Sunday of
each month.’
‘Where’s the Home?’
SUMMER, 1914
‘At Le Point-du-Jour. Do you remember the “Superannuates’
Home” in which Chasle put his mother — and ruined himself
doing it? No? You didn’t hear the story? One of the old loonie’s
most priceless exploits, that was. . . .’
‘What’s become of the old chap?’ Jacques asked, smiling
despite himself.
‘Chasle? Oh, he’s going strong. He keeps a gadget-shop in
the Rue des Pyramides — the vocation he was born to, according
to him. And, I must say, he seems to be making a success of it.
You should drop in at the “Mart” if you happen to be that
way. His partner is another quaint bird. The pair of them
would have delighted Dickens.’
For a moment, back on familiar, fraternal ground, they
laughed in unison.
‘As for Mademoiselle,’ Antoine began after a pause, then
hesitated, obviously embarrassed. He seemed particularly
anxious to explain to Jacques just what had happened. When
he continued, it was in that easy, urbane tone of his, which
rang new for Jacques. ‘You must understand, old chap; the
idea that Mademoiselle would end her days anywhere but in
this house never crossed my head. . . . All right, Leon ; put the
salad-bowl on the table, we’ll help ourselves. . . . It’s a water-
cress salad,’ he added, for Jacques’ benefit, as he waited for
Leon to go out. ‘Will you have it with the cold meat, or after?’
‘After.’
‘I may tell you frankly,’ Antoine went on, after making sure
they were alone, ‘I’d never have stirred a finger to get the
poor old thing to leave. Still, I don’t deny it suited my book,
finding her so keen on going. There really wasn’t any place for
her in my new domestic arrangements. . . . Well, it wasn’t till
she realized Gise was determined to live in England that she
got the idea of entering the Home. Gise was quite ready to
take her aunt with her to England, for them to live together.
But no, the old lady had her fixed idea : the Home. Every day
after lunch, she used to fold her skinny hands and start the
same refrain, wagging her little head at me. “I’ve told you
again and again, Antoine. In the state I’m in ... I don’t want
to be a drag on anybody. I’m seventy-eight, and considering
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the state Fm in ...” I used to say: “That’s all right. We’ll
talk about it to-morrow.” Then one day, why shouldn’t I
admit it? — it simplified things immensely, you know — I gave
in. You don’t think I was wrong, do you? Anyhow I made
a point of seeing everything was done in style. For one thing,
I paid the highest rate on their scale of charges, to make sure
they’d do the old lady proud. I went to the Home myself and
chose two rooms opening into each other, and had them done
up thoroughly and the furniture from the room she had here
moved into them, so that she wouldn’t notice the change too
much. Like that, she couldn’t have the feeling of being thrown
on the scrap-heap, so to speak, could she now? As it is, she’s
more like a lady of small means living in a boarding-house.’
He cast an anxious look at his brother and was evidently
reassured by Jacques’ expression of approval, for he began to
smile at once.
‘So that’s that!’ he added cheerfully. ‘But I don’t believe
in humbugging oneself, and I don’t mind telling you it was the
devil of a relief when she cleared out from here I’
He fell silent, and picked up his knife and fork again. For
some minutes, absorbed in his story, he had ceased eating.
Now, his eyes bent on his plate, he was skilfully dissecting
a leg of duck. He seemed absorbed, but it was obvious his
attention was directed towards something other than his fingers’
neat activity.
I 7
Sunday^ July ig
JACQUES AND ANTOINE DISCUSS THE SOCIAL PROBLEM. JENNY
BREAKS IN ON THEIR DEBATE
‘I ’ M thinking of your twelve million workers,’ he suddenly
remarked. ‘Tell me, does this mean you’ve joined the Socialist
Party?’
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SUMMER, 1914
His head was still bowed over his plate, and he kept it thus,
though his eyes rose to observe his brother.
Jacques parried the question with a movement of his head
that might have been a nod. As a matter of fact he had not
received his Party member’s card till a few days back. It was
only at the threat of a European conflagration that he had
renounced his independence, feeling it his duty to join the
Socialist International, the one organization with energy and
man-power to cope with the forces making for war.
As Antoine handed him the salad, he casually enquired :
‘Are you quite sure, old chap, that your present life, in these
— er — political surroundings, is really the life that suits you
best? Does it give enough scope to your intellectual abilities,
to your literary gifts — let’s say, to your real personality?’
Jacques slammed the salad-bowl on to the table; he was
furious with his brother. ‘Antoine,’ he thought, ‘is getting to talk
more and more like Father; in just the same pompous style.’
Antoine was obviously making an effort to speak in a
detached, neutral tone. After some hesitation he put a direct
question.
‘Really, in your heart of hearts, do you think you were born
to be a revolutionary?’
Jacques gazed at his brother, a wry smile on his lips. His
face clouded over, and he did not reply at once.
His lips were quivering when he spoke again. ‘What’s made
me a revolutionary,’ he said, ‘is having been born here, in this
house, the son of a bourgeois father. It’s having had to witness
as a child, day after day, all the injustice which keeps our
privileged class on top. It’s having had always, from my boy-
hood up, a vague feeling of guilt, of complicity — yes, a rankling
sense that, though I loathed the whole system, I profited by it.’
Antoine was about to speak; but Jacques stayed him with
a gesture and went on.
‘Long before I knew what capitalism was, before I’d even
heard the term, when I was twelve or thirteen — do you
remember? — I was up in arms against the world around me,
against my schoolfellows, my teachers; against Father’s world,
his Charitable Societies and the rest of it.’
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SUNDAY, JULY I9
Antoine was meditatively stirring the salad in the bowl.
‘Why, yes!’ he conceded with a slight laugh. ‘I’m the first
to acknowledge that the world you speak of creaks at the j’oints
a bit. Still, its axle has been well ground in, and it goes on
turning more or less smoothly — by sheer force of habit. You
shouldn’t be so hard on it. That world has its virtues and
responsibilities ; its greatness, too. Not to mention its amenities,’
he added with the air of genial unconcern, which, more even
than his words, antagonized his brother.
‘No!’ Jacques exclaimed, his voice vibrant with emotion.
‘The capitalist world is indefensible. It has created ridiculous,
inhuman relations between man and man. It’s a world in which
all values are perverted, where there’s no room for the respect
of human personality, where self-interest is the only motive
and the one ambition is to amass more and more wealth. A
world in which the magnates of high finance have it all their
own abominable way ; they can mislead public opinion by their
venal Press, and have even the Government at their beck and
call. It’s a world where the individual, the worker, is reduced
to nothingness, where . . .’
‘So according to you,’ Antoine broke in — he, too, was
beginning to lose his temper — ‘the worker doesn’t profit at all
by the increased production we have in the world to-day?’
‘What he gains by it is paltry, negligible! The only ones
who really profit by it are company promoters and shareholders,
bankers and big-business men.’
‘Whom naturally you picture as idle pleasure-seekers,
battening on the workers’ sweat, and gorging caviare and
champagne in the company of pretty ladies !’
Jacques did not even deign to shrug his shoulders. ‘No, I
picture them as they are, Antoine. At least, as the best amongst
them are. Far from idle; quite the opposite. But pleasure-
seekers, yes ! The lives they lead are at once laborious and
luxurious — cheerfully laborious, shamelessly luxurious. Wholly
satisfying lives, because they combine all possible pleasures —
all the enjoyment and excitements of doing jobs that exercise
the mind, the sporting thrill of competition, of taking chances,
plotting and scheming, and winning through. And they have
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SUMMER, 1914
all the satisfactions that money, social prestige, the mastery
over men and things, can bring. In a word, the life of the
privileged few'. Well, can you deny that?’
Antoine said nothing, but in his heart he judged all that as
windy rhetoric, a tissue of commonplaces, the public speaker’s
stock-in-trade. Still, he was conscious that his annoyance
prevented him from being wholly just, and that the problems
raised in his brother’s divagations had their importance. ‘Far
more difficult problems,’ he mused, ‘than Jacques, and those
like him who only see one side of the picture, imagine. There’s
no limit to their complexity, and the people who should tackle
them aren’t humanitarian utopia-merchants but scientists,
great thinkers who’re immune from passion and trained to
scientific methods.’
‘The capitalist system,’ Jacques concluded, with an angry
glance at his brother, ‘was in the past, no doubt, a factor of
progress. But in our time, in the inevitable course of things,
it’s become a force opposed to common sense, to justice, to
the dignity of man.’
‘Hear! Hear!’ Antoine smiled. ‘Finished your tirade?’
They fell silent. Leon had come in, and was changing their
plates.
‘Put the cheese and fruit on the table,’ Antoine said. ‘We’ll
look after ourselves.’ He turned to his brother and asked in
a deliberately casual tone: ‘Cream cheese, or Dutch?’
‘Neither, thanks.’
‘What about a peach?’
‘Yes, I’d like one.’
‘Wait, I’ll choose it for you.’
He purposely stressed the note of cordiality.
‘Now let’s talk seriously,’ he added, after a moment, in a
concihatory tone that took the sting out of the remark. ‘What
exactly is “capitahsm”? I must admit I haven’t much use for
reach-me-down expressions of that sort — especially of words
ending in -ism.’
He expected the remark to disconcert his brother. But Jacques
looked up quite calmly. His irritation seemed evaporating;
indeed, a faint smile hovered on his lips. For a moment his
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SUNDAY, JULY ig
eyes lingered on the open window. Night was falling and, above
the dingy house-fronts, the glow was dying from the sky.
‘Personally,’ he explained, ‘when I speak of capitalism, I
mean just this : a certain distribution of the world’s wealth and
a certain way of turning it to account.’
Antoine pondered for a moment, then nodded approval.
Both were equally relieved to feel their conversation was taking
a less combative turn.
‘I hope that peach is ripe, anyhow. Some sugar?’
‘Do you know,’ Jacques said, without answering the question,
‘what most revolts me in capitalism? That it has divested the
worker of everything that made him a man. It has uprooted
him, wrenched him away from his village, from his home, from
all that gave some human individuality to his life, and penned
him in the industrial areas. The craftsman has been deprived of
all the noble satisfactions of his handiwork. He’s been brought
down to the level of an insect, a laborious ant toiling in the
ant-hill factories of capitalism. Have you any idea how the
work is organized in those hellish places? Do you realize the
literally inhuman separation that prevails between the manual,
mechanical side of industry and — how shall I put it?— its
intellectual side? Do you know what a factory-hand’s daily
round has come to be, the soul-deadening slavery of it? Informer
times that man would have been a craftsman, with a little
workshop of his own, keen on his job. Now he’s doomed to
be nothing, as an individual; nothing but a cog in the wheel,
a trivial part of one of those immense machines whose mysteries
he need not even guess at, to carry out his task. Mysteries which
are the prerogative of a select few, always the same persons:
the directors and the engineering staff.’
‘For the simple reason that men with brains and competence
are always in a minority.’
‘Man has been robbed of his personality, Antoine. That’s
the crime of capitalism. It has turned the worker into a machine ;
no, worse than that, the slave of a machine.’
‘Steady on there!’ Antoine protested. ‘For one thing, what
you’re up against isn’t capitalism, but the age we live in, the
“machine age.” And then — don’t you see you’re overcolouring
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the picture? I’m very far from believing there’s the hard-and-
fast barrier between the workman and the skilled engineer that
you describe. Oftener than not there’s a give-and-take, an
actual collaboration between them. The factory hand to whom
his machine is a “mystery” is very rare. He wouldn’t have
been able to invent it, I grant you, nor perhaps to put it
together, but he has a very shrewd idea how it works, and
quite often can suggest improvements on the technical side. In
any case he likes his machine, is proud of it, looks after it, and
keeps it in good running order. Studler, who’s been over to
the States, has some remarkable things to tell about the
“mechanical craze,” as he calls it, that’s come over the American
workmen. . . . Then there’s the case of my hospital — it’s not
so very different from a factory, by and large. There, too, you
have employers and employees ; men who use their brains and
men who use their hands. I’m an employer of labour, in my
way. Well, I assure you, the fellows under my orders, down
to the most junior ward attendant, have nothing “servile”
about them, in the sense you’d give the word. We all work
together for the same end — to cure our patients — each according
to his capacities. I’d like you to see how bucked up they all
are when our joint efforts have brought off a difficult cure.’
Jacques listened with growing irritation, ‘Antoine,’ he
thought, ‘is always so cock-sure about his views.’ Still, he was
conscious of having opened the discussion with a foolish gambit,
seeming to base his case against capitalism mainly on the
distribution of labour in industrial concerns.
Mastering his feelings, he replied :
‘It isn’t so much the nature of the work under the
capitalist system that’s so revolting; it’s the conditions under
which it’s done. Needless to say, I’ve nothing against
mechanized industry, as such; what I dislike is the way a
privileged class exploits it for selfish ends. If we made a rough
cross-section of the present social order, we should find, on
the one hand, a favoured few, wealthy middle-class folk, some
of them industrious and efficient, others mere idlers and
parasites, who between them own everything, have everything
their own way, keep aU the high posts to themselves, and all
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the profits, too. On the other side we would find the masses,
the actual producers, the exploited — the innumerable herd
of slaves.’
Antoine made a gesture of amusement.
‘Slaves?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, not slaves,’ Antoine replied good-humouredly. ‘Just
citizens. Men who, in the eyes of the law, have exactly the
same rights as their employer, or the expert ; whose votes count
the same ; to whom nobody can dictate. They can work or not,
according to the desires they want to gratify; they can choose
their trade, their factory, and change them if they like. If
they’re bound by contracts these are contracts that they’ve
freely agreed to, after talking things over. Can you call such
men slaves? Slaves of whom, of what?’
‘Of their poverty. You’re talking like a perfect demagogue,
my dear Antoine. All those liberties are eyewash. In actual
fact the worker’s never independent, dogged as he is by want.
All that stands between him and starvation is what he can
earn by work. Therefore he’s compelled to offer himself,
shackled hand and foot, to the bourgeois group that has all
the jobs in its pocket and fixes wages. You said just now that
skilled men, the experts, are a minority; of course I realize
that. It isn’t superior skill as such that I’m against. . . . But
only see how it works out : the employer, if he thinks fit, gives
a job to the workman who needs food, and pays him certain
wages. But those wages never represent more than a minute
fraction of the profits earned by the workman’s industry. The
employer and the shareholders pocket the balance.’
‘And rightly so. That balance represents what’s due to them
for what they put into the business.’
‘Quite so. Theoretically, I agree, those profits are due to
the employer for his management of the business, and to the
shareholders for being kind enough to lend their money to it.
(I’ll come back to that point.) But let’s compare the figures,
let’s compare the profits with the wages. Those profits are the
lion’s share, grotesquely out of proportion to the services
rendered by the men who get them. What’s more, they enable
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the bourgeois to consolidate and increase his ascendancy. He
doesn’t use the money to raise his standard of living, but treats
it as capital, to invest in other concerns, and so, inevitably, it
keeps on growing. And it’s this wealth, capitalized at the
workers’ expense, which has given the well-to-do class its
absolute power during so many generations. A power which
is based on the most ghastly injustice. For (this is the point
I said that I’d come back to) the supreme injustice isn’t just
the disparity between the income the capitalist draws from his
investment and the wages of the man who sweats at the machine.
No, the flagrantly unjust thing is this, that money works for
its possessor, multiplies automatically, without his having to
stir a finger. Money breeds money ad infinitum. Have you ever
thought of that, Antoine? Yes, that diabolical invention, the
banking system, has provided the gang of profiteers with a
highly perfected instrument for buying up its slaves and
battening on their drudgery. A horde of nameless, undistin-
guished slaves, not in the least alarming, and so well kept out
of sight that, to salve one’s conseience, one can easily pretend
to know nothing of their miserable existences. That, to my
mind, is the supreme iniquity, that tithe levied on the toil and
sweat of others — on the most immoral, most hypocritical of
pretexts.’
Antoine thrust his chair back from the table, lit a cigarette
and folded his arms. Darkness was falling now so quickly that
Jacques could see little of the changes of expression on his
brother’s face.
‘And I suppose,’ Antoine remarked in an ironical tone, ‘your
Revolution’s going to charm all that away with a touch of
the wand?’
Jacques pushed back his plate and, resting his elbows on
the table, cast a defiant look at his brother across the gathering
dusk.
‘Yes. As things are now the worker is an isolated unit,
powerless, at the mercy of his daily needs. But the first result
of the Revolution will be to give him political power. Then
he’ll be able to make a fresh start, to set up new institutions,
a new code of laws. The one thing evil, you see, is this exploita-
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tion of man by man. In the coming world such exploitation will
cease to be possible. That’s the world we’re out to build. A world
in which the wealth inequitably hoarded up by parasitic bodies
like your big businesses and banks will be put into circulation,
so that every member of the community profits by it. Nowadays
the poor devil who produces the goods has so much trouble
in making sure of the minimum he needs to live on, that he
has neither time nor energy, not even the desire, to learn to
think, to make the best of his faculties. When we say that the
Revolution will abolish the proletarian state, that’s what’s
meant. In the view of true revolutionaries, the Revolution
shouldn’t merely give the worker a more comfortable life ; above
all, it should change the relations between men and their work,
so that the work itself becomes more “human,” instead of being
a dreary, never-ending round of toil. The worker should have
leisure, and cease being a mere tool ; should have time to think
about himself and make the most of his abilities, his human
qualities. Yes, he should become, so far as in him lies — and
his capacities for that are far less limited than people think —
a man with a mind, a personality, of his own.’
He had spoken of ‘capacities less limited than people think’
in the compelling voice of one who is convinced of what he
says; but a more heedful listener than his brother might have
detected an undertone of doubt.
Antoine was thinking things over. ‘Really,’ he said at last,
‘I’ve nothing against your plans — assuming that they’re feasible.
But how are they to be carried out?’
‘There’s only one way : by a revolution.’
‘Leading to a dictatorship of the proletariat?’
‘Exactly. That’ll be needed to start off with.’ Jacques sounded
thoughtful. ‘But I’d rather call it a government by the pro-
ducers — that word “proletariat” has served its time. Even in
revolutionary circles they’re trying nowadays to get rid of the
old liberal-humanitarian j’ argon of ’48.’
But inwardly he admonished himself. ‘That’s not true.’ He
remembered his own ‘jargon’ and the pow-wows at the ‘Talking
Shop.’ ‘Still,’ he mused, ‘we’ll have to come to that.’
Antoine, who had hardly listened to his brother’s last remarks,
161
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SUMMER, 1914
said nothing. He was thinking out the implications of a
‘dictatorship.’ One by the proletariat seemed to him feasible
enough, and he could easily picture it existing in certain
countries — in Germany, for instance. But, in France it seemed
to him quite definitely ruled out. Such a dictatorship, in his
opinion, could not become effective merely by switching the
gears into reverse; to ensure its success it would need time
to dig itself in, to show economic results, to strike root deeply
in the rising generation. That would require at least ten or
fifteen years of unremitting tyranny, repression, expropriation,
human suffering. And would a country like France, composed
of rampant individualists, clinging to every shred of personal
liberty, France with its innumerable small investors, a land
in which even the revolutionaries, for the most part, retained,
unknowingly, the tastes and habits of the small private owner
— would such a land for ten consecutive years put up with the
iron discipline that would be needed? It was the merest moon-
shine even to dream of such a thing !
Meanwhile he grew aware that Jacques was rambling on
with his indictment.
‘Only with the overthrow of capitalism will its control and
exploitation of all human activities come to an end. The
possessive appetite of the exploiting class is insatiable. The
industrial progress of the last twenty years has only served to
increase their power, and their ambition is to get all the world’s
wealth into their clutches. So blind is their greed for expansion,
for conquering new fields, that the various elements of world-
capitalism, instead of forming an alliance to rule the world
between them, are actually trying to cut each other’s throats,
regardless of their most obvious interests — like a rich man’s
heirs fighting over the estate. That, indeed, is the one root
cause of the war that looks like starting.’ He seemed haunted
by that thought of an impending war. ‘But this time, quite
likely, they’ll find they’re up against forces they haven’t
reckoned with. The workers, thank goodness, aren’t the lamb-
like creatures they used to be. This time they won’t allow the
greed and internecine quarrels of the propertied classes to
plunge them into a disastrous war, of which once more the
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SUNDAY, JULY 10
workers would bear the brunt. For the moment, the revolution
can wait. The first thing is, at all costs, to prevent a war.
After that . . .’
‘Yes? After that?’
‘Oh, we’ve lots of definite plans to put in hand. The most
urgent, of course, will be to make the most of this triumph
of the left-wing parties, the revolt of public opinion against the
imperialist governments, and make an effective bid to grasp
the reins of power. Then we’ll be able to impose a rational system
of production on the world — on the whole world, naturally.’
Antoine was listening attentively. He made a gesture showing
he quite saw what Jacques meant, but his faint smile implied
he was less sure about endorsing it.
‘Of course I know,’ Jacques went on, ‘it’s not going to be
easy. To bring it off, the revolutionaries will have to take
drastic measures; enter on a state of active rebellion.’ The
phrase was Meynestrel’s and, speaking it, Jacques’ voice had
the Pilot’s crisp, curt intonation. ‘It’s going to be a stiff fight.
But we shall be forced to set about it. Otherwise the workers
of the world may be obliged to wait for half a century yet to
win their freedom.’
There was a short silence. Antoine was the first to speak.
‘And have you the men you need to carry out these . . . fine
schemes of yours?’
He was doing his best to keep their debate from growing
heated and on impersonal lines. He hoped, ingenuously enough,
that he would thus convince Jacques of his good will, broad-
mindedness and impartiality. But, far from being grateful to
his brother, Jacques was annoyed by this over-scrupulous
detachment, which he knew was feigned. The accent of self-
assurance and the faintly bantering tone which Antoine could
not keep out of his voice when conversing with his young
brother, never let Jacques forget that Antoine, conscious of
his age, was ‘talking down’ to him from a pedestal of ripe
experience and wisdom.
‘The men? Certainly we have them,’ Jacques proudly said.
‘But often the great men of action, the inspired leaders, aren’t
those we reckoned on; a crisis throws up new men.’ For a
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few silent moments he was lost in dreams of the future. His
voice was gentler when he spoke again. ‘There’s nothing
fanciful about my ideas, Antoine. That the world’s moving
towards socialism is a patent fact — no one can ignore it. Our
final triumph will be hardly won, and. I’m much afraid,
accompanied by a general upheaval and by bloodshed. But,
for those who have eyes to read the signs of the times, there
can be no doubt about the issue. And looking further ahead,
we may foresee one world- wide government.’
‘And a “classless” world.’ Antoine’s tone was ironical.
Jacques went on as if he had not heard.
‘An entirely new regime which, in its turn, I suppose, will
raise a host of unexpected problems. But at least it will have
solved the problems which are crushing the life out of mankind
to-day — their economic problems. There’s nothing chimerical
about it, I repeat ; and with such an end in prospect, no hope
is too high.’
Jacques’ faith and fervour, the emotional effect of which was
heightened by the semi-darkness of the room, served only to
harden Antoine’s scepticism.
‘ “A state of active rebellion,” ’ he mused. ‘All very fine
— but we’ve heard that slogan before. Those noble efforts to
remould the world always involve too high a cost. And never
lead to any permanent improvement. These feather-brained
idealists are always in a hurry to smash things up, and start
a new regime. But when they’ve got it going, they find it has
created a new set of evils and, on balance . . . It’s the same
in medicine ; people are always in too much of a hurry to try
new treatments.’
Though less severe on the contemporary world than Jacques
was, and though in general he fell in with its ways readily
enough — partly from indifference, partly through natural
adaptability, and also because he was inclined to trust the
‘specialists’ in charge of world affairs — ^Antoine was far from
looking on it as a perfect world. ‘Yes, he’s right in a way,’
he now was thinking. ‘The conditions of life can and should
be constantly ameliorated ; that’s a law of civilization, indeed
of life. But by degrees.’
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SUNDAY, JULY I9
‘And to achieve all that,’ he said aloud, ‘do you think there’s
nothing for it but a revolution?’
‘Yes, I’ve come to think so.’ It sounded like a confession.
‘Oh, I can see your idea; for a long time I had it too. I
managed to convince myself that reforms within the framework
of the constitution would suffice. But now I’ve ceased to think
that.’
‘But surely that socialism you believe in is steadily gaining
ground year by year, isn’t it? All over the world, even in
despotically ruled countries like Germany?’
‘No. In fact, the changes you’re thinking of actually prove
my point. Such reforms alleviate the effects of the disease, but
they never attack its causes. And that’s only natural. However
excellent the intentions we attribute to the men making these
reforms, in practice we find they’re always on the side of the
economic system which it’s our task to combat and upset. And
you can’t expect capitalism to sap its own foundations, compass
its own destruction. When the capitalists are in a tight corner
owing to the discontent they’ve provoked, they take over from
socialism such reforms as cannot be dispensed with. But that’s
all.’
Antoine held his ground. ‘It’s a mistake to cry down half-
measures. For, after all, even those partial reforms are so many
points scored by the social ideal that you’re championing.’
‘Bogus points, trifling concessions made with a bad grace
and changing nothing fundamental. In those countries you
mentioned — what vital change has been brought about by
reform? The monied class have kept their power intact; they
still control labour and have the masses in their toils; they
still manipulate the Press and bribe or browbeat the public
authorities. There’s only one way to make a satisfactory job
of it, and that’s to make a clean sweep of the existing system,
and replace it by the socialist plan in its entirety. Like town-
planners who, to get rid of slums, have to pull them down
completely, and rebuild everything. Yes,’ he added with a
sigh, ‘it’s my profound conviction now that only a revolution,
a tremendous upheaval starting from below and utterly disin-
teg^rating the old order, can rid the world of the virus of
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SUMMER, 1914
capitalism. Goethe held we had to choose between injustice
and disorder; and he preferred injustice. I think differently.
I don’t believe that without justice any real order can be
established ; anything, in my opinion, is preferable to injustice.
Anything! Even’ — he lowered his voice — ‘the shambles of a
revolution.’
(‘If Mithoerg could hear me just now,’ Jacques suddenly
reflected, ‘how he’d love it !’)
He fell silent, lost in thought. At last he spoke again.
‘The only hope I have is that perhaps in certain countries
bloodshed may be avoided. It wasn’t necessary to set up our
guillotine of ’93 in all the capitals of Europe for the republican
ideas of ’79 to spread abroad and change the world. France
had opened up a breach through which the other nations
marched successfully. Very likely it will be enough if one nation
only — Germany, for instance — pays the price in blood; then
the new order will take root, and the rest of us, with the
German precedent before our eyes, will work out our destinies
on peaceful lines.’
‘I’m all for your upheaval,’ Antoine grinned, ‘provided it
takes place in Germany 1 But,’ he continued in a serious tone,
‘I can’t help wondering what you and your friends will make
of it, when it comes to building up that new world of yours.
For, try as you may, you can’t get round the fact that you
must build it of the same human material. And if there’s one
thing that never changes, it’s human nature.’
Jacques had suddenly turned pale. To hide his discomfiture,
he turned away.
Unwittingly Antoine had touched his brother’s most sensitive
point, the secret doubt that always rankled like an ulcer in
his mind. That faith in the coming race which was the raison
d'etre of revolution, and indeed gave an impetus to the whole
movement, came to Jacques only by fits and starts, under the
brief stress of others’ enthusiasm. He had never managed to
share that faith instinctively. His pity for his fellow men was
boundless, and he had given up his life to them whole-heartedly ;
but, for all his desperate efforts, for all his fervent reiterations
of the Party’s slogans, he remained sceptical as to the possi-
aa *
166
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
bilities of human nature. For in his heart of hearts he felt a
tragic disability ; he did not, could not, believe sincerely in the
theory, taken as a gospel by his friends, of man’s spiritual
progress. He was quite ready to believe that, by a radical
change of human institutions, by reconstructing the social
edifice, it would be possible to amend, adjust and indeed
perfect, the lot of man. But he could not bring himself to
assume that the new social order would renew mankind itself,
and, as a matter of course, produce an intrinsically better type
of humanity. Every time he became alive to this crucial doubt
so deeply-rooted in his very being, he felt an agonizing rush
of shame, remorse, despair.
‘I’ve no particular illusions,’ he admitted in a slightly changed
voice, ‘as to the perfectibility of human nature. But I do hold
that man, as we find him to-day, has been warped, not to say
ruined, by the social system foisted upon him. By oppressing
the worker, this system degrades him, weakens his morals,
makes him over to his lowest instincts, and crushes out of
him any tendencies to raise himself he may possess. I don’t
deny that these base instincts are innate; but I do think — I
want to think — that he has other instincts as well. I believe
that our civilization prevents these better instincts from
maturing and putting the others in their place. And that
we’ve the right to expect men to be different when what
is best in them has been given a chance of making good in
freedom.’
Leon had just opened the door. He waited for Jacques to
finish speaking before announcing in a colourless voice :
‘I’ve served the coffee in the study, sir.’
Antoine looked round. ‘No, bring it here. And turn on the
light, please; only the cornice lights.’
A pale glow spread across the ceiling, filling the room with
a mild, agreeably diffused radiance.
‘Wait a bit!’ Antoine was far from guessing that on their
present topic he and his brother held very similar views. ‘There
we come up against a crucial issue. For all those simple souls,
man’s imperfection is caused by the rottenness of the existing
order; so it’s only natural they should have a blind faith in
167
SUMMER, 1914
the efficacy of a revolution. But what if they saw things as
they are, if they realized once for all that man’s a pretty vile
creature — and there’s nothing to be done about it ! Every social
system’s doomed to reproduce the failings, the incurable defects
of human nature. So what’s the use of running the risks of a
general upheaval?’
‘The hideous wastage going on to-day,’ Jacques began in a
low, sullen tone, ‘isn’t only on the material plane . . .’
Leon’s entrance with the coffee-tray cut him short.
‘Two lumps?’ Antoine asked.
‘One only. Thanks.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘All that !’ Antoine murmured, smiling. ‘Well, my dear
fellow, there’s only one word for it ; it’s utopian.’
Jacques scowled at him. For the ‘my dear fellow’ he had had
exactly his father’s voice. Jacques was conscious of his temper
rising, and yielded to it ; it would take his mind off his dis-
comfiture.
‘Utopian!’ he exclaimed. ‘You don’t seem to realize that
there are thousands of quite sensible people for whom these
“utopian” projects constitute a carefully thought out plan of
action. And they’re only waiting for a chance to get it under
way.’ His thoughts had flashed back to Meynestrel, to the
Russian theorists at Geneva, to Jaures. ‘Quite likely both of
us will live long enough to see those utopian projects worked
out implacably in some corner of the globe and giving rise
to a new order of society.’
‘Yet,’ Antoine protested, ‘men will still be men. There’ll
always be successful men and under-dogs. Only the men on
top won’t be the same. And their power will be based on
different institutions, different customs from ours. These men
will form a new group of profit-takers, a new ruling class. That’s
a law of life. Meanwhile what will have become of the good
features — and you must admit there are some — of our
civilization?’
‘Yes.’ Jacques seemed to be talking to himself, and his
brother was struck by the sadness in his voice. ‘Yes, the only
way of answering people like you would be to bring off some
168
SUNDAY, JULY 10
Striking and successful “utopia.” Till that conies, you’re on
velvet! Like all those who feel comfortably off in the world
to-day and want to keep it exactly as it is, at all costs.’
Antoine set down his cup brusquely.
‘But I’m quite ready to welcome a changed world!’ he
exclaimed with an eagerness that gave Jacques pleasure to
hear. That’s something anyhow, he thought; to have kept,
at least, an open mind.
‘You’ve no idea,’ Antoine went on, ‘how independent I feel,
how remote from any social obligation! Why, I’m hardly a
good Frenchman! I’ve my profession, and it’s the only thing
I stand by. As for the rest, well, you can reorganize the world
— outside my consulting-room — to your heart’s content, for all
I care. If you think you can fix up a social order in which
poverty and waste, stupidity and the lower instincts will cease
to exist ; a society without injustice, without privilege and graft,
in which the law of the jungle — eat or be eaten ! — has been
superseded, well, the sooner you get down to it, the better.
I hold no brief for capitalism. It’s the prevailing system, the
system I was born into, and under which I’ve lived for thirty
years. I’m accustomed to it, and put up with it; indeed,
whenever I can, I make use of it. But I’m quite ready to adjust
myself to changed conditions. And if you’ve really found a
better plan, more power to your elbow ! All I ask for myself
is to be allowed to carry on with my vocation. And I’ll agree
to anything you like except being told to drop the one thing
that gives value to my life. In any case,’ he continued cheer-
fully, ‘however perfect your new regime may be, even if you
succeed in developing a feeling of fraternity amongst men, I
doubt if you’ll be able to do the same thing for their health !
Disease, and consequently doctors, will always exist, so there
won’t be any great change in my relations with the rest of
mankind. Provided,’ he added with a flutter of the eyelids, ‘that
your socialized world allows me. . . .’
There was a sharp ring at the door-bell. Antoine pricked
up his ears. Nevertheless, he finished off his phrase.
‘. . . allows me a certain liberty — yes, that’s my sine qua non! —
a certain professional freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom
169 G*
SUMMER, 1914
to work in my own way ; with all the risks and responsibilities,
needless to say, that it involves.’
He stopped speaking, and listened.
They heard Leon open the hall door, then a woman speaking.
Pressing his hand on the table, Antoine prepared to rise, a
look of professional gravity already settling on his face.
Leon appeared at the door, but before he could utter a word,
the girl behind him burst into the room.
Jacques gave a start and. suddenly went pale. He had recog-
nized Jenny de Fontanin.
18
Sunday y .July ig
JEROME DE FONTANIN’s TRAGIC GESTURE
Jenny had not recognized Jacques, perhaps not even noticed
him. She walked up to Antoine, her face convulsed.
‘Please come at once. Father’s wounded.’
‘Wounded!’ Antoine repeated. ‘Seriously? Where?’
She raised a trembling finger towards her right temple. The
gesture, the horror written on her face, taken with what little
Antoine knew of Jerome de Fontanin’ s past, led Antoine
immediately to surmise a tragedy — attempted murder, or
suicide, most likely.
‘Where is he?’
‘At an hotel. I’ve the address. Mamma’s there, waiting for
you. Do please come !’
‘L^oni’ Antoine shouted. ‘Tell Victor to get the car out at
once!’ He turned again to the girl. ‘At an hotel? How did it
happen? When was it?’
170
SUNDAY, JULY I9
She did not reply. Her eyes had just lit on the other person
in the room — Jacques!
He was looking down, but he felt Jenny’s gaze upon his face,
burning like fire.
They had not had sight of each other since that summer
at Maisons-Laffitte — four years ago.
Antoine moved hastily towards the door. T’ll fetch my
instrument- case. ’
Now she was alone with Jacques, Jenny began to tremble.
She was staring at the carpet, and the corners of her lips were
twitching imperceptibly. Under the stress of an emotion such
as a minute earlier he would have deemed impossible, Jacques
dared not draw a breath. Both looked up at the same moment ;
and when their eyes met, the pupils were dilated with anguish
and amazement. A look of terror, veiled instantly by the
dropped lids, fluttered in Jenny’s eyes.
Unthinkingly Jacques went towards her.
‘Anyhow, do sit down,’ he said awkwardly, drawing up a
chair.
She did not move. Statue-still she stood under the flooding
light, the shadows of her lashes flickering on her cheeks. She
was wearing a closely fitting tailor-made costume in navy-blue,
which brought out her height and slimness.
Then Antoine bustled into the room, his hat already on his
head. Leon followed, bringing two emergency outfits which,
pushing the dinner-plates aside, Antoine began spreading out
on the table.
‘Now, give me some details, please. The car will be here
in a minute. How was he wounded — with what? Leon, go and
fetch a box of compresses — quickly.’
As he spoke he took a forceps from one of the wallets and
slipped it into the other. His gestures were hurried, but always
deft and sparing of unnecessary movement.
‘We don’t know anything.’ The moment Antoine entered,
Jenny had darted to his side. ‘It’s a revolver shot.’
‘Ah!’ Antoine exclaimed without looking towards her.
‘We didn’t even know he’d come to Paris. Mamma thought
he was in Vienna.’
SUMMER, 1914
She spoke in a subdued voice, breathless but assured. Over-
wrought as she clearly was, she still gave an impression of
strength and courage.
‘The people from the hotel where he’s staying came and told
us. Half an hour ago. Mamma dropped me here on the way.
She wouldn’t wait, as she was afraid . . .’
Leon’s entry with a nickel-plated instrument-case in his hand
cut her short.
‘Right!’ Antoine said. ‘Now we’ll start. Is it far to the hotel?’
‘It’s 27a, Avenue de Friedland.’
Antoine turned to Jacques. ‘Coming along?’ It sounded less
a question than an order. Then he added : ‘You might come in
useful, you know.’
Jacques glanced at Jenny without replying. She made no
sign, but he had an intuition that she agreed to his accompany-
ing them.
‘Come along!’ Antoine said.
The car had not left the garage, and the courtyard was
bathed in the glare of the headlamps. While Victor rapidly
closed the bonnet, Antoine helped Jenny in.
‘I’ll sit in front,’ Jacques said, taking the seat beside the
chauffeur.
They made a quick run to the Place de la Concorde, but
there was so much traffic in the Avenue des Champs-Elysees
that the car had to slow down.
Sitting at Jenny’s side, Antoine deferred to her silent mood.
He had no qualms about relishing those familiar yet always
pleasurable moments, the period of suspense and pent-up
energy that precedes the time for taking action and respon-
sibility. Absent-mindedly he stared out of the window.
Huddled in a corner, as far as possible from any human
contact, Jenny was trying vainly to overcome her trembling
fit; she was quivering from head to foot like a jarred crystal.
From the moment when an unknown hotel waiter whom
Madame de Fontanin had admitted into the flat with some
suspicion, had announced in a surly tone that ‘the gent in
No. 9 had just put a bullet through his head,’ to the moment
when she had alighted from the taxi, in which she and her
172
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
mother had been holding hands without a word, without a
tear, all her thoughts had been for the wounded man. But then
— miracle of miracles ! — she had seen Jacques ; and her father
had passed clean out of mind. There, just in front, was a dark,
stalwart form — but carefully she kept her eyes averted — an
all too real presence that thrilled every fibre of her being.
Clenching her teeth, she pressed her left arm against her heart
to still its tumult. For the while she was quite incapable of
analysing that rush of uncontrollable emotion. Those few
minutes had been enough to plunge her back into that great
tragedy of her life, the experience that had all but killed her,
and from whose shadow she had thought to have escaped
for ever.
The brakes went on suddenly; she looked up. The car had
had to stop dead at the roundabout of the Avenue, to allow a
regiment to pass.
‘It’s always like that when one’s in a hurry!’ Antoine
grumbled, turning to Jenny.
A troop of young men in close formation, flourishing Chinese
lanterns, was following the band. All were keeping step, and
lustily joining in the chorus of the marching song the band was
playing. On either hand a dense crowd, held back by files of
policemen, was cheering the vociferous youngsters and saluting
the colours as they passed.
After making sure that Jacques did not lift his hat to the
colours, the chauffeur kept his own on, and ventured to remark :
‘Only to be expected. In this part of Paris, them chaps have
it all their own way.’ Encouraged by Jacques’ scornful shrug,
he added : ‘In my part of the town, in Belleville, they’ve had
to stop their bloody demonstrations. They always ended up
in a free fight.’
Just then the procession swerved to the left, leaving the road
clear. A few minutes later the car was speeding up the slope
that led into the Avenue de Friedland.
Antoine had the door open before it stopped, and jumped
out at once. With an effort Jenny rose and, declining Antoine’s
proffered arm, stepped on to the pavement. For a moment
she stood there unmoving, dazzled by the shaft of light that
173
SUMMER, 1914
issued from the entrance of the hotel ; her head was spinning
and she could hardly keep from falling.
‘Follow me,’ Antoine said, gently touching her shoulder.
‘I’ll lead the way.’
Pulling herself together, she quickly stepped in after Antoine.
She dared not look round; she was wondering ‘where is heV
Even at that tragic moment it was not to her father that her
thoughts turned.
The ‘Westminster’ was one of the numerous hotels in the
vicinity of the Arc de Triomphe which are principally used by
foreigners. The little lobby was brightly lit; at the far end,
across a glazed door, they had a glimpse of a lounge in which
groups of people were smoking and playing cards, to the
strains of a small band concealed behind a row of palms.
At Antoine’s first remark the porter signed to a plump lady,
caparisoned in black, at the reception-office desk. She rose at
once and with a hostile air led them rapidly to the lift. The
lift-door clanged to. With a sense of vast reUef, Jenny noticed
that Jacques was not coming up with them.
Before she had time to steady her nerves, she found herself
on the landing, facing her mother.
Mme. de Fontanin’s face was at once haggard and serene.
The first thing to catch Jenny’s notice was that her mother’s
hat was awry, and this small sign of carelessness so unlike her
mother moved her even more than the grief-stricken eyes.
Mme. de Fontanin had an opened envelope in her hands.
She clutched Antoine’s arm.
‘He’s in there. Come !’
Quickly she led him down the corridor.
‘The police have just gone. He’s alive. We’ve got to save
him somehow. The hotel doctor says he can’t be moved.’ She
turned to Jenny. ‘Wait for us here, darling.’ She wished to spare
the girl the sight of her wounded father.
She handed Jenny the envelope, which had been found on
the floor beside the revolver. The address on it had enabled a
message to be sent at once to her flat in the Rue de I’Ob-
servatoire.
Left to herself on the landing, Jenny began deciphering as
174
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
best as she could in the dim light her father’s letter. Her name,
Jenny, in the concluding lines, caught her eye.
I beg my Jenny to forgive me. Somehow I’ve always
failed to show her my affection . . .
Her hands were shaking. In vain she tautened every sinew,
trying to quell the riot of her blood throbbing in every vein
down to her finger-tips, but somehow she forced herself to read
the letter through from the beginning.
Therese, do not judge me too harshly. If you only knew
all I have been through before coming to this ! And how
I grieve for you now, sweetheart ; how I regret the suffer-
ings I’ve brought on you, you so kind and so true! I’m
bitterly ashamed ; for always I have returned you evil for
good. And yet I always loved you, sweetheart. If only you
knew! I love you and I have never loved anyone but you.
The words seemed to flicker out under her tearless, fevered
eyes, that kept on wandering from the paper to cast appre-
hensive glances towards the lift- well. Jacques’ nearness filled
her thoughts. Her dread of seeing him reappear was so intense
that she was hopelessly unable to fix her attention on that
pitiful farewell which her father, on the brink of death, had
hastily pencilled on the sheet before her; the words by which,
before making that final tragic gesture, he had shown that his
last thoughts were for her. T beg my Jenny to forgive me . . .’
She looked round to find some place where to hide, to shelter.
Her eyes fell on a bench in a corner ; she stumbled towards it,
sat down. She made no effort to analyse her emotions. She was
too tired. Gladly she would have died there, so as to have
done with it all, to escape — from herself.
But she could not control her imagination. Memory cast on
the screen a pageant of the past streaming before her eyes with
the insensate swiftness of a dream. The enigma began for her,
with those last months of the summer of 1910, at Maisons-
Laffitte. Before that she had seen Jacques growing daily more
and more in love with her, more and more set on winning her
affection. And she, too, had been alarmed at finding herself
175
SUMMER, 1914
growing daily more affected by his presence, her resistance
weakening. Then suddenly, without a word of warning,
without even a line of explanation, without the least attenuation
of the affront given her by this brusque volte-face, he had
ceased coming. Soon after, Antoine had rung up Daniel;
Jacques had disappeared ! Then had begun for her that phase
of agonizing doubt. Why had he disappeared — killed himself,
perhaps? What was the secret that her wayward lover had
taken with him into the unknown?
Throughout October, 1910, she had anxiously followed the
fruitless efforts made by Antoine and Daniel to trace the
fugitive. She had never betrayed her agony of mind to any of
those around her; not even to her mother. That had gone on
for months. Alone, in silence and bewilderment, lacking even
the consolation of true religious faith, she had somehow
managed to survive in that stifling atmosphere of mystery.
Obstinately she concealed not only her despair but her physical
sufferings, too : a general collapse due to the violent shock she
had received. At last after a year of unaided efforts, of con-
valescence broken by relapses, she had achieved a certain peace
of mind. Her body remained to be cured. On the doctor’s
advice she had spent a summer in the mountains, and moved
to the South of France when the winter cold began. During
the previous autumn, in Provence, she had learned from a
letter of Daniel’s to her mother that Jacques had been found;
he was living in Switzerland, and had come to Paris for M.
Thibault’s funeral.
For some weeks she had been the prey of a vast unrest, but
it had passed away of its own accord, and so surprisingly
quickly that she had had the impression then, for the first time,
of being definitely cured. Yes, all was over between her and
Jacques. Nothing remained ! So she had thought at the time.
And now, this evening, at the most poignant moment of her
existence he had incredibly appeared again : her lost lover with
the changeful eyes, the sullen face.
She was leaning forward on the seat, her eyes still fixed
apprehensively on the staircase. Her thoughts were running
riot. What of the future? Was then a chance meeting, the hazard
176
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
of two glances, enough to stir up all the dregs of the past, to
demolish, in one brief hour, the physical and mental balance
she had taken years to recover?
Meanwhile, complying with a sign from his brother, Jacques
had stayed in the vestibule.
The lady in black satin had resumed her seat in the reception-
office, and gave him now and then, above her glasses, a hostile
glare. The hotel orchestra, composed of a piano and one
shrill violin, was struggling through a tango for the benefit of a
single couple of dancers, of whom Jacques had brief glimpses
through the glass door. In the dining-room some belated
diners were finishing their meal. A clatter of crockery came
from the kitchen and tray-bearing waiters were flitting to and
fro, discreetly murmuring as they passed the cash-desk: ‘An
Evian for No. 3,’ ‘No. lo’s bill, miss,’ ‘Two coffees for 27.’
Came running down the stairs a chamber-maid, whom with
her pen the lady in black waved towards Jacques. She was
bringing a note from Antoine.
Telephone Dr. Hequet to come at once. Passy 0913.
A waiter led Jacques to the telephone-box. He recognized
Nicole’s voice at the other end, but did not tell her who was
speaking.
Hequet was at home, and came to the telephone at once.
‘I’m starting right away. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’
The cashier was waiting outside the call-box. She had a
deep mistrust of everything that had to do with ‘the fool in
No. 9’ ; a sick man in the hotel was bad enough ; a case of
suicide, outrageous!
‘You know, sir, things like that can’t be allowed in a re-
spectable hotel. You’ll have to get him moved immediately.’
Antoine had just come down the stairs. He was bare-headed,
and alone. Jacques went up to him at once.
‘Well?’
‘He’s in a state of coma. Have you ’phoned?’
‘Hequet’s on his way.’
177
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine had not met Nicole again since the night before her
little daughter’s death. He knew that, soon after, Nicole had
given birth to a dead child, under difficult conditions which had
left her maimed for ever, body and soul. She had grown thinner.
All the youth and hopefulness had gone out of her expression.
She held out her hand to him. As their eyes met a slight
frown settled on her face, for she associated Antoine with the
bitterest moments of her life. And now again, it struck her, she
was meeting him in a tragic atmosphere, in the shadow of death.
Talking in the surgeon’s ear, Antoine shepherded him
towards the lift. As the lift gate closed, Jacques had a glimpse
of his brother placing his forefinger on a point at the upper
margin of his temple.
The lady in black had darted forth from her retreat.
Ts he a relation?’
‘He’s the surgeon.’
‘But surely they don’t intend to operate on him hereV
Jacques turned his back on her.
The orchestra had stopped playing. The lights in the dining-
room were out. The station ’bus deposited a silent young
couple — English, apparently — with smart, brand-new 'luggage.
Ten minutes passed; then the chamber-maid appeared
again, with another note from Antoine.
Ring up the Bertrand Nursing Home, Neuilly 5403. Say
Dr. Hequet wants ambulance sent immediately for lying-
down case. They’re to get theatre ready for operation.
Jacques telephoned at once. As he left the box he ran into
the cashier, who had been leaning against the door. She gave
him an amiable, relieved smile.
He saw Antoine and Hequet crossing the hall. The surgeon
drove off by himself.
Antoine went back to Jacques.
‘Hequet’s going to try to extract the bullet to-night. It’s the
only chance . . . ’
Jacques looked at him questioningly. Antoine made a wry face.
‘The skull is badly smashed. It will be a miracle if he pulls
through. Now, listen !’ He moved towards a writing-table near
the entrance of the lounge. ‘Madame de Fontanin wants
180
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
Daniel to be informed; he’s at Luneville. Will you take the
telegram to one of the offices that stay open all night, to the
one at the Bourse, for instance.’
‘Do you think they’ll give him leave?’ Jacques had remem-
bered that Europe was on the brink of war — and Luneville
was a frontier town.
‘Of course. Why ever not?’ Antoine asked uncompre-
hendingly.
He had begun composing the telegram at the writing-desk.
Then he changed his mind, and crumpled up the telegraph-
form, remarking: ‘No. The safest thing’s to wire direct to his
colonel.’ He took another form and began again, murmuring
as he wrote : ‘Very urgent . . . request grant leave . . . Sergeant
Fontanin. His father . . . ’ He stood up.
Docilely Jacques took the telegram. ‘I’ll see you later at the
Nursing Home, I suppose? What’s the address?’
‘Just as you like. It’s 14, Boulevard Bineau. But what’s the
use, your coming?’ he added after a moment’s thought. ‘The
best thing you can do, old chap, is to go home to bed.’ He was
on the point of asking Jacques where he was staying and
proposing to put him up; but he thought better of it. ‘Ring
me up to-morrow morning before eight, and I’ll tell you
what’s happened.’
As Jacques was going away, he called him back. ‘By the way,
you’ll have to wire to Daniel, too, to give him the address of
the Nursing Home.’
19
Sunday, July ig
AFTER MIDNIGHT. A POLITICAL CONFABULATION AT THE
CAFE DU PROGRES
I T was just on midnight when Jacques left the Bourse Tele-
graph Office. He was thinking of Daniel, picturing his friend
opening the telegram he had just sent off, signed ‘Dr.
181
SUMMER, 1914
Thibault.’ For a while he lingered on the edge of the pavement,
gazing across the lighted, almost empty square. There was a
dull ache in his limbs, as if a bout of fever were coming
on, and he felt dizzy. ‘What’s wrong with me to-night?’ he
wondered.
Then, energetically, he drew himself up and crossed the
street. The air seemed more limpid, but the night was sultry
still. He walked aimlessly ahead. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
Suddenly the picture of Jenny rose before his eyes: Jenny,
pale and slim in the blue coat and skirt, as he had just seen
her after all those years, so unexpectedly. But, in a flash, he
dispelled the vision, almost without an effort.
By the Rue Vivienne he came to the Boulevard Poissonniere,
and halted. The boulevards, which on that warm summer
Sunday evening had so far been almost empty, were entering
on the crowded hour following the finish of the theatres. The
cafe terraces were packed with people. Open taxis were
speeding past in the direction of the Op^ra; along the pave-
ments, too, the crowds streamed westwards. Some pretty
ladies in huge, flowered hats were moving against the current
towards the Porte Saint-Martin, eyeing every likely male.
Standing at the corner, with his back to a shop-window,
Jacques watched the flowing tide of carefree Parisians. So
Antoine’s blindness was shared by everyone! Amongst those
laughing passers-by was there one who guessed that Europe was
already struggling in the toils? Never had Jacques realized so
poignantly how the fate of unthinking millions lies in the hands
of a few men chosen almost haphazard, into whose keeping
the nations recklessly commit their safety.
A newspaper-vendor shuffled by, crying lackadaisically ‘‘La
Liberti, La Presse, late edition.’
Jacques bought the papers and scanned them under a
street-lamp. ‘The Caillaux Case. M. PoincarPs Russian visit. The
Cross-Paris Swimming Contest. Mexico and U.S.A. Jealous Husband
Slays his Rival. Tour de France Cycle Race. The Balloon Grand Prix.
Closing Prices’ Nothing !
Again a thought of Jenny glanced across his mind, and
hastily he decided to return to Geneva on the following day,
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SUNDAY, JULY I9
forty-eight hours earlier than he had planned. The decision
gave him a surprising sense of relief
Meanwhile, suppose he looked in at the offices of V HumanitP.
Almost light-heartedly he turned into the Rue du Croissant.
The district in which most of the papers were at that hour in
process of being printed, teemed with life, and Jacques threaded
his way across a human ant-heap. Bars and cafes were brilliantly
lit up and thronged with customers; a hubbub of voices
poured through the open windows into the streets.
A small gathering in front of the Humanite building blocked
the entrance. Jacques shook hands with some. They were
already discussing a piece of news that Larguest had j'ust
transmitted to the ‘Skipper.’ An exceptional deposit of four
thousand million francs in gold, known as the ‘War Reserve,’
had recently been paid into the Banque de France.
The group began to disperse. Some suggested rounding off
the night at the Cafe du Progres, a restaurant near-by, where
socialists in quest of red-hot news could count on finding
pressmen ready to impart it.
Jacques was invited to join them there for a glass of beer.
He was already an accepted figure in such circles, and was sure
to come across old friends. They knew he had been sent from
Switzerland on a mission, treated him with a certain deference,
and did their best to help him in his task by furnishing informa-
tion. Nevertheless, for all their trust and good-fellowship, many
of these militant socialists, who came from the working class,
looked on Jacques as an intellectual, a well-wisher yet an
‘outsider’ by the accident of birth.
At the Cafe du Progres they had secured for themselves a
fair-sized, low-ceiled room on the first floor, to which the
proprietor, a member of the Party, only admitted known
adherents. That night some twenty men, old and young, were
gathered round the beer-splashed, marble-topped tables. The
air was dense with cigarette smoke, acrid with the fumes of
beer. They were discussing an article by Jaur^s, which had
appeared that morning, on the line the Socialist Party should
take in case of war.
Cadieux, Marc Lenoir, Stefany, Berthet and Rabbe were
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SUMMER, 1914
there, grouped round a bearded giant of a man, fair-haired,
pink cheeked — Tatzler, a German socialist whom Jacques had
already met at Berlin. Tatzler was declaring that the article
would be reproduced and commented on by all the German
Press. According to him, the speech that Jaur^s had recently
made in the Chamber to justify the socialists’ refusal to vote
supplies for the President’s trip to Russia — a speech in
which Jaur^s declared that France had no desire to be ‘pitch-
forked into peril’ — had produced a deep impression across
the Rhine.
‘And so it did in France,’ said Rabbe, a bearded man with a
curiously gnarled skull, who had once been a typesetter.
‘That’s what led the Federation de la Seine to pass that motion
for a general strike if and whenever a war seemed threatening.’
‘Will your German workers,’ Cadieux asked, ‘be prepared,
and are they disciplined enough, to go on strike automatically,
if your social-democratic party approves of, and gives orders
for it, even in the face of an impending mobilization?’
‘I’ll turn the tables on you !’ Tatzler retorted with a confident,
good-humoured guffaw. ‘If general mobilization’s ordered
here, do you think your French working class is disciplined
enough . . .?’
‘That would mainly depend,’ Jacques broke in, ‘on the
attitude of the German proletariat.’
‘Personally I’d answer, “Yes, undoubtedly!” ’ Cadieux
exclaimed.
‘I’m not so sure,’ Rabbe said. ‘I’d be more inclined to say
“No.” ’
Cadieux shrugged his shoulders. He was a tall, lean, loosely
built man, who was to be seen everywhere — on group com-
mittees, at the Labour Exchange, at C.G.T. Headquarters,
in editors’ rooms and Government offices — always in a hurry,
dashing here and there, inapprehensible. He was usually to
be seen in transit between two calls, and no sooner did one
want to buttonhole him than he had vanished. The sort of
person who is always recognized a shade too late, when he has
just gone by.
‘Yes? No?’ Tatzler grinned with all his teeth. ‘Well, with
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
US, it’s gerade so. Ach, do you know?’ he suddenly exclaimed,
rolling his blue eyes. ‘In Germany they’re very much worrying
about your Poincare that’s visiting the Czar!’
‘Yes, damn it!’ Rabbe grunted. ‘Couldn’t have chosen a
worse moment. In the eyes of the whole world we look like
giving our official blessing to the Greater Russia policy.’
‘Especially,’ Jacques remarked, ‘when you read our Press.
The leaders in our French daily papers sound a provocative
note that’s positively disgusting.’
‘Do you know what?’ Tatzler went on. ‘It’s because Viviani,
your Foreign Minister, is there that everyone thinks they must
be planning a diplomatic crusade against “Germanismus” at
St. Petersburg. In my country we know for sure that Russia
it is who forced France into making a three years’ military
service law. Wofur? Because the Panslavism, it threatens
Germany and Austria always more.’
‘Still, things are in a bad way in Russia,’ said Milanoff, who
had just entered and taken a chair beside Jacques. ‘The French
papers hardly mention it. But Praznovski, who has just come
over from Russia, has lots to tell. A strike movement has started
in the Putiloff factory and it’s spreading like wildfire. Yesterday,
Friday, there were sixty-five thousand men out in St. Peters-
burg alone. The police opened fire and many people were
killed. Women and girls amongst them.’
A vision of Jenny in her blue dress rose momentarily before
Jacques’ eyes. To dispel the haunting vision, he turned to the
Russian, saying :
‘So Praznovski’s here?’
‘He arrived this morning. He’s been confabulating with the
“Skipper” for the last hour. I’m waiting for him. Shall you
stay on to see him?’
‘No.’ Jacques felt , restless — his fever was rising again — and
the idea of staying where he was, hearing them thresh out the
same eternal problems in this smoke-polluted atmosphere,
seemed all at once unbearable. ‘It’s late. I must be getting
home.’
But, out in the street, he found the darkness and his solitude
almost harder to endure than the crowded promiscuity of the
185
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine made no answer. A silence fell on the room.
Insects were hovering round the lamp which shed a harsh,
uncompromising light on the shoddy smartness of the furniture,
on the gilt scroll-work of the chairs, and on a beribboned,
bilious plant languishing in a blue earthenware pot near the
middle of the room. Now and again a muffled bell buzzed
at the far end of the corridor, followed by a patter of footsteps
on the tiled floor, then the sounds of a door gently opened,
slowly closing. Sometimes, too, there came a faint far-off
whimper, a tinkle of porcelain, and silence closed in again.
Madame de Fontanin bent towards Antoine, holding her
small, plump hand over her aching eyes to shield them from
the glare. In an undertone she began telling him about Jerome,
setting forth in broken phrases what little she knew about her
husband’s tangled affairs. It came easy to her thus to think
aloud, for she had always felt she trusted Antoine implicitly.
He, too, listened, bending forward, looking up from time to
time to exchange an earnest, understanding glance. ‘What a
fine woman she is !’ he was thinking. And how he appreciated
this tranquil dignity of hers in her distress, and, no less, the
womanly charm which always graced her virile qualities of
mind ! ‘Father,’ he thought, ‘was only a bourgeois. She’s a
patrician.’
Meanwhile he did not miss a word of what she was saying.
And gradually he formed an idea of the circumstances which
had led Jerome de Fontanin to self-destruction.
For some eighteen months Jerome had been employed by an
English firm carrying on a timber business in Hungary from
its London headquarters. It was a well-established company,
and for some months Madame de Fontanin had felt assured
that at last her husband had found stable employment. In
point of fact, however, she had never been able to ascertain
exactly what his duties were. The greater part of his time
was spent in trains, travelling between London and Vienna
with brief halts at Paris, in the course of which he always
spent an evening at his wife’s flat. He trailed everywhere with
him an attache-case bulging with documents, and affected a
jaunty air, but was always so full of high spirits and geniality,
188
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
SO lavish of endearments and delicate attentions for his family,
that they could but be captivated. What the poor woman
did not mention was that certain discoveries had convinced
her that her husband was keeping up two expensive love-affairs,
one in Austria and the other in England. Anyhow he seemed
to be earning a good salary; what was more, he had given
her to understand that he expected a rise which would enable
him to come to the aid of his wife and daughter, on generous
lines. For, during the last few years, Madame de Fontanin
and Jenny had been living at wholly Daniel’s expense . . .
When making the confession, Madame de Fontanin was
obviously torn between shame at this exposure of her husband’s
shortcomings, and pride in the revelation of her son’s devotion.
Fortunately Daniel was drawing a good salary for his work
on Ludwigson’s Art Review. Prospects had looked black for
a moment, when Daniel had been called up for his military
service. But Ludwigson, anxious to make sure of Daniel’s
collaboration when his period of training was over, had done
the handsome thing and undertaken to pay him a reduced
but stable salary during his absence. Thus Madame de Fontanin
and Jenny were assured of the indispensable minimum to live
on. Jerome was quite alive to this state of things and, indeed,
often referred to it. With characteristic lightheartedness he
left it to his son to keep the home together. But with a show of
lordly airs and graces he insisted on being informed of the exact
sums thus disbursed, and never missed a chance of saying how
grateful he was to Daniel. Moreover, he professed to look on
this pecuniary aid as an advance made to him by his son, a
loan he would repay at the earliest opportunity. He explained
that he preferred to postpone payment till the ‘advances’
came to a ‘round sum,’ and made a point of keeping an exact
account of the items of this debt. Periodically he sent Daniel
and Ther6se a typewritten statement of account in duplicate,
in which the compound interest on the debt was worked out
at a generous rate.
The ingenuous yet disillusioned air with which Madame de
Fontanin set forth the facts made it impossible to judge if she
was duped or not by Jerome’s unscrupulous pretences.
189
SUMMER, 1914
Just then Antoine looked up and saw Jenny’s eyes fixed on
him, in that gaze so dark with secrecy and solitude, so heavy
with the secrets of her inner life, that never could he meet it
without a vague sense of discomfort. He had never forgotten
that distant day when he had questioned Jenny, then a little
girl, about her brother’s escapade; when for the first time he
had caught that look in her eyes.
Suddenly the girl stood up.
‘It’s stifling here,’ she said to her mother, dabbing her fore-
head with the tiny handkerchief she had screwed up into a
ball between her fingers. ‘I’m going down to the garden,
for a breath of fresh air.’
Madame de Fontanin nodded assent, and followed her with
her eyes as she left the room. Then she turned again to Antoine.
She was not sorry Jenny had left them to themselves. So far
there had been nothing in her tale to account for the attempt
at suicide. Now it fell to her to embark on more difficult and
painful revelations.
In the course of the previous year Jerome, who had formed
business connections at Vienna, had ‘unwisely’ lent his name
and title — for in Austria he passed himself off as ‘Count de
Fontanin’ — to the directorate of an Austrian wall-paper
manufacturing concern, which after a brief career had recently
gone into liquidation, under shady circumstances. The accounts
were being looked into and a judicial enquiry into the direc-
tors’ conduct was on foot.
To make things worse, a suit had been instituted by the
governing body of the Trieste Exhibition held in the spring of
1914, the wall-paper firm having occupied a costly stall in it,
and failed to pay the rental.
Jerome had taken a particular interest in the Exhibition;
he had induced his British employers to give him a month’s
leave in June, and spent it enjoying himself in Trieste. The wall-
paper company had remitted to him from time to time large
sums, for which, it seemed, he was unable to account ; the official
receiver taxed Count de Fontanin with having spent the com-
pany’s money on riotous living at Trieste and wilfully neglec-
ting to pay the stall-rent. In any case, as Managing Director
190
SUNDAY, JULY IQ
Jerome was held responsible for the company’s failure, and he
was said to possess a large block of shares in the company,
made over to him ‘without consideration’ to secure his services
as Director.
Madame de Fontanin had had no notion of her husband’s
plight till a few weeks before, when she had received a letter
from Jerome — a vague but urgent appeal to her to raise
another loan on the house at Maisons-Laffitte of which she
was the sole owner, and on which a previous mortgage had
already been contracted on his account. She had sought her
lawyer’s advice, and he had promptly had enquiries made in
Austria. It was thus that she had learnt that proceedings had
been instituted against her husband.
But Madame de Fontanin had no notion what had happened
during the last few days, what new complications had led
Jerome to this act of despair. She knew that some of his creditors
at Trieste were daily publishing the most venomous allegations
against him in a local paper. Were the charges well-founded?
Obviously Jerome must have j'udged his position past redress.
Even if he managed to elude the hand of justice, he could not
hope, after such a scandal, to keep his employment in the
English company. Probably he had felt himself threatened
on all sides, at the end of his tether, and had seen in suicide
the only issue.
Madame de Fontanin ceased speaking. In her eyes there was
a dim, perplexed look, as if she were putting herself an unut-
tered question : Have I done for him all I ought to have done?
Would this have befallen him had he felt me at his side, as
in the past? Harrowing question, unanswerable now for ever!
With an effort she collected herself.
‘What can have become of Jenny? I’m so afraid of her
catching cold; she may have fallen asleep down there in the
open.’
Antoine rose.
‘Don’t bother to move. I’ll go down and see.’
SUMMER, 1914
21
Sunday^ July ig
MME. DE FONTANIN AT JEROME’s BEDSIDE
Jenny had lacked energy to go all the way down to the
garden. All she wanted was to escape from the sitting-room,
so as not to see Antoine.
Pressing her hand against the tiled wall to steady herself,
she had taken some aimless steps along the corridor. Though
all the windows were open, the heat was suffocating. From
the operating theatre on the floor below a smell of ether came
in nauseating gusts that, pouring up the staircase, mingled
with the warm draughts circulating through the building.
The door of her father’s room stood ajar. It was in almost
complete darkness; the only light came from a small lamp
placed behind a screen, near which a nurse sat, knitting. In
the bed the outlines of a motionless body could be dimly seen,
the arms stretched out along the counterpane. The head lay
flat upon the pillow, the forehead swathed in bandages. The
half-open mouth showed as a black cavity, from which low
sounds escaped of hoarse but regular breathing.
Standing at the door, Jenny watched the mouth, and
listened to the stertorous respiration with a calmness, almost
amounting to indifference, that startled her. Her father was
dying. She knew it, repeated it to herself, but without being
able to bring that tragic truth clear from the chaos of her
thoughts, to consider it as a concrete, definite fact and closely
touching her. It was as if her heart had frozen, grown hard
as stone. Yet she loved her father, despite his failings. She
remembered how once, when she was a little girl, she had
stood at his bedside, when he had been dangerouly ill, and
how the sight of his haggard face convulsed with pain had
wrung her heart. Why was it she felt to-night so terribly
indifferent? She forced herself to linger by the door; her arms
192
SUNDAY, JULY 10
hung limp and her eyes were fixed on the bed ; she felt at once
unmoved and self-reproachful, shocked by her callousness,
fighting down an impulse to walk away and put this tragedy
out of mind. It was as if, coming untimely on this night of all
nights, her father’s agony frustrated for her some last chance
of happiness.
After a while she withdrew her shoulder from the door-jamb
and walked to the corridor window, for a breath of fresh air.
A chair stood by it. Sitting down, she rested her folded arms
upon the window-sill, pillowing her aching brows on her
clasped hands.
How she hated Jacques! He was a despicable, unstable
creature. Irresponsible, perhaps ; a madman.
Below, in the warm darkness of the sleeping garden, not a
leaf stirred. Dimly she saw dark masses of foliage, white paths
ribboning the lawns. A Japanese varnish- tree cloyed the
still air with pungent fumes as of some Eastern drug-shop.
Beyond the trees shone dotted lines of light, the street-lamps
bordering the avenue. A sound came from it like the drone of
a huge coffee-mill, as a never-ending file of market-gardeners’
carts laboriously rumbled over the cobbles, Paris-bound. Now
and then the hum of a motor drowned the rumble of cart-
wheels and in a burst of shrill, keen light a car flashed past
behind the leafage, and vanished into the darkness.
‘Don’t go to sleep there!’ a voice murmured in her ear.
She gave a start; an unuttered cry rose to her lips, as if
Antoine had touched her.
‘Let me fetch you a comfortable chair, anyhow.’
She shook her head, rose stiffly and followed Antoine back
to the sitting-room.
On the way he remarked in a low tone : ‘His condition is no
worse. In fact the pulse has improved and there are indications
that the coma is not so deep as it was.’
Madame de Fontanin had risen from her chair when they
entered, and came towards them.
‘I’ve only just thought of it!’ She turned impulsively to
Antoine. ‘I should have let James know. Pastor Gregory, I
mean ; our oldest friend.’
193
H
SUMMER, 1914
As she spoke she had half unconsciously slipped her arm
round Jenny’s waist and drawn the girl to her side, and the
two faces, each marked with a different sorrow, were touching
cheek to cheek.
Antoine’s gesture implied that he remembered Pastor
Gregory quite well. And suddenly he had an impulse to snatch
at this unlooked-for pretext for escape, and to get away from
the Nursing Home, if only for an hour. He might even have
time to drop in at Anne’s place ... A picture rose before him
of Anne in her white peignoir, asleep on the couch.
‘That’s easily done!’ He could not keep out of his voice a
cheerful undertone that betrayed his eagerness. ‘What’s his
address? I’ll go and fetch him.’
Madame de Fontanin protested. ‘But it’s miles from here —
near the Gare d’Austerlitz.’
‘That doesn’t matter; I’ve my car, and one gets along fast
at night.’ He added in a completely natural tone: ‘I’ll take
the opportunity of looking in at my place to see if any patients
have rung me up. Til be back in an hour.’
He was already half way to the door, hardly listening to the
address given him by Madame de Fontanin or her heartfelt
thanks.
‘How devoted he is ! How fortunate we are to have him I’ she
could not help exclaiming once he had left the room.
There was a moment’s silence; then ‘I loathe him,’ Jenny
said.
Madame de Fontanin gazed at her without surprise, and
made no comment. Leaving her daughter in the parlour, she
went to see Jerome.
The rattle in the throat had ceased and the breath, which
hour by hour was growing weaker, came and went silently
between the parted lips.
Signing to the nurse not to move, Madame de Fontanin
took a seat at the foot of the bed. She had lost hope. Her eyes
were fixed on the poor bandaged head; tears of which she
was unconscious were streaming down her cheeks.
‘How handsome he looks!’ she thought, her eyes still intent
on her husband’s face.
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
Under the turban of cotton-wool and lint that hid the silver
locks and brought out the Oriental elegance of the profile, the
delicately formed yet virile features brought to mind in their
frozen calm the death-mask of some young Egyptian king.
A slight swelling had set in, smoothing out flaws and furrows,
and, in the dimly lighted room, it seemed as if some miracle
had given Jerome back his youth. The smooth cheeks described
a flowing curve from the high cheek-bones to the strongly
moulded chin. The bandage had dragged up the skin of the
forehead, and the line of the closed eyelids sloped up towards
the temples. Slightly burnt by the anaesthetic, the lips had a
sensual fullness. Handsome he was now as in their young days,
when sometimes of a morning, waking early, she had pored
upon his sleep-bound face.
With hungry eyes, aglow with devotion and passionate
regret, she gazed through her tears at what remained of
Jerome, of the one great love of her life. She was picturing
him as he had been at thirty, slim and lithe as a young panther ;
remembering his smile, his coaxing eyes and faintly bronzed
cheeks — her ‘Indian Prince,’ she had used to call him, proud
of being loved by such a man. She could hear his laugh, that
way he had of saying ‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ in three distinct sounds,
throwing his head back. She recalled his gaiety, his never-
failing good humour : his false gaiety, for he had always lived
in a world of make-believe ; deceit was his natural element —
smiling, thoughtless, incorrigible deceit.
All that, her whole life long, she had known of love, now lay
before her, on that bed. And yet how often had she told herself
in these latter years that her love-life was over ! Now in a flash
she realized that she had never really given up hope. Only
to-night would all be ended, all hope blotted out for ever.
Burying her face in her hands, she invoked the Divine Con-
soler, but in vain. An all-too-human emotion was stirring in
her heart, and she felt forsaken by God, the prey of carnal
regrets. She could not keep her thoughts from turning shame-
fully towards a last, sweet memory of their love. At Maisons it
had been, in their country home, when she had brought Jerome
back from Amsterdam after Noemie’s death. One night,
195
SUMMER, 1914
humbly, he had crept into her room. He had pleaded for
forgiveness. Hungering for pity, for caresses, he had nestled
up to her in the darkness. She had taken him in her arms
and pressed him like a child to her breast. One night, one
summer night like this. Beyond the open windows had glim-
mered the starlit forest. Thus till dawn she had watched over
him, herself unsleeping while he slept in her arms, like a tired
child, her child. One summer night, a warm, soft, languorous
night like this. . . .
Suddenly Madame de Fontanin raised her head. There was
a glint of frenzy in her eyes ; a wild, insensate desire had come
over her to drive away the nurse, to stretch herself beside him
on the bed and for the last time to press her body to his body’s
warmth, and, since he must enter on eternal rest, for the last
time, the last, to put him to sleep — like a tired child, her
child. . . .
Before her, on the counterpane lay, still as a hand of stone,
his graceful hand with the fine-drawn, sinewy fingers and,
darkly glowing on the ring-finger, a large sardonyx. It was the
right hand, the hand which, daring all, had lifted the revolver.
‘Ah, why wasn’t I with you, darling, at that moment?’ she
murmured in a heart-broken voice. Perhaps, before raising
that hand to his forehead he had called to her in his heart.
And surely he would have stayed his hand if in that moment
of weakness she had been beside him, had she remained at
her post, the post assigned to her by God for all her earthly
life, and which, however wronged she thought herself, she
should never have deserted.
She closed her eyes. Some minutes passed. Little by little
she was regaining the serene climate of her soul, the heaven-
sent peace of mind which, laying these phantoms of the past,
remorse was bringing back to her. Once more she was entering
into that communion with a Universal Power which was her
never-failing help in time of trouble, and beginning to see
from another angle this trial God had willed her to endure.
And now she sought to discover behind the sorrow that had
befallen her, the shock of which had left her bowed and
broken, a divine intent, a secret purpose of the Immanent
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SUNDAY, JULY IQ
Will. And it seemed to her that at last she was nearing a haven
of rest, the rest that comes of self-effacement and submission, and
quells every grief in those whom God has touched with grace.
Clasping her hands, she whispered: ‘Thy Will be done.’
22
Sunday, July ig
Antoine’s musinos on his brother’s socialistic views
With all its windows up, the car speeded across a city of
the dead, past echoing walls, while the short summer night
died on the peep of day.
Leaning well back, his arms and legs extended, a cigarette
between his lips, Antoine was busy with his thoughts. A sleep-
less night was having its usual effect ; far from prostrating him,
it had strung up his nerves enjoyably.
‘It’s half-past three,’ he murmured as the car passed the clock
at the Place Pereire. ‘By four I’ll have hauled that old loonie
of a parson out of bed and packed him off to the Nursing Home ;
then I’ll be free. It’s possible, of course, that poor devil pegs
out while I’m away, but the chances are he’ll linger on another
twenty-four hours.’ He felt no qualms of conscience. ‘Everything
possible has been done,’ he decided, after mentally recapitula-
ting the phases of the operation. Then, still harking back to
the immediate past, he recalled Jenny’s arrival; then his
conversation with Jacques. After this burst of professional
activity, the discussion he had had with his brother seemed to
him more futile than ever.
‘I’m a doctor; I’ve a job to do, and I do it. What more do
they expect of me?’
By ‘they’ he meant Jacques, who did nothing, had no job,
but merely fussed and fumed and ranted. He also meant the
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SUMMER, 1914
horde of revolutionary agitators behind Jacques, whom he
had almost fancied he could hear yelling like wolves outside
his door, while Jacques was talking.
‘Inequality, injustice! Of course they exist. Do those lads
imagine they’re the first to spot that interesting fact? But
what’s to be done about it? Our present civilization is a datum,
damn it! We’d do best to start by taking things as they really
are, instead of as they might have been. And their revolution?’
he murmured sotto voce. ‘A fine mess-up they have in store for
us. Smashing the whole show up, and starting all over again —
like kids playing with toy bricks. They’d do better to get on
with their jobs, instead of wailing about the rotten state of
society — and refusing to do their share in it. . . . Yes, you
damned fools, can’t you see it’s up to you to make the most
of the world as it is, the age and milieu you live in, and put
your shoulders to the wheel — as we do? And instead of scheming
and plotting for a catastrophe — the benefits of which are
problematic — to employ the short span of life that’s yours in
making the best of your jobs, in making yourselves useful in
your various walks of life, however humble?’
Pleased with this tirade, he rapped out, like a closing
cadence: ‘And that’s that!’
Another wave of indignation swept over him; he had just
remembered Jacques’ refusal to take up his share of the estate.
‘Nowadays, it seems, to be well off, is to lead a life that’s based
on the “exploitation of one’s fellow-men !” What utter nonsense !
Far be it from me to stick up for the principle of hereditary
succession ! But damn it, since that’s the law of the land at
present, since we’ve been born into the system, what’s to be
done about it? . . . Now, what’s the next traditional idea I’m
going to break a lance with?’ He smiled at his own audacity.
‘It almost looks as if I was in revolt against the things I’m
trying to defend.’
Then with a sudden revulsion of mood he said aloud, as if
trying to convince an objector. ‘In any case, I maintain that
often the system of inheritance leads to excellent results. I’ve
frequently noticed that “coming into money” as they call it
facilitates the making of a fine career. And by a fine career,
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SUNDAY, JULY I 9
I mean one that’s useful, renders service to the community at
large.’ He folded his arms. ‘Is it to be accounted a crime, then,
not to be poor?’
He had a vague impression that he had put the question in
an unfair form. The real issue in the debate within his conscience
was rather: Is it a crime to be rich, when one has not earned
the money by one’s own labours? But he refused to linger over
such fine shades of meaning, and jerked his shoulders petulantly
as if to shake off the small, vexatious thought.
‘He wrote to me last winter, ‘‘I do not wish to benefit by this
legacy.” What a damn-fool notion ! To “benefit” by it. The
next thing, I suppose, will be to accuse me of having “benefited”
by it! And in the last analysis, who is it that will benefit by
the new scope provided for my professional career, by our
researches? Is it I?’ He was honest enough to answer: ‘Yes,
it’s I. What I meant was : Will I be the only one to benefit by it?
Really, when all is said and done, in the case of such a man as
I am, isn’t it by furthering one’s personal interests that one
furthers most effectively the interests of the community?’
The car was crossing the Seine. The river, the long vista of
bridges and the banks were bathed in rosy mist. He tossed the
butt of his cigarette through the window and lit another.
‘You’re far more like me than you think, my little noodle of
a brother!’ he chuckled to himself complacently. ‘You were
born a bourgeois, my lad, just as you were born with red
hair. Your hair has darkened but the reddish glint’s still there,
you can’t get rid of it. It’s the same with your precious “revolu-
tionary instincts.” I haven’t much faith in them. Atavism,
upbringing, the natural bent of your mind — all pull you in
the opposite direction. Just wait; very likely when you’re forty
you’ll be more of a “damned bourgeois'' than I am!’
The car was slowing down; Victor leaned out, trying to
read the numbers on the houses. He drew up finally in front
of a barred gate.
‘Still, for all his faults, Tm very fond of Jacques,’ Antoine
murmured to himself as he opened the door. And now he
reproached himself for not having given his brother a heartier
welcome, and shown more pleasure at seeing him again.
199
SUMMER, 1914
23
Sunday, July ig
AT MME. DE FONTANIN’s REQ^UEST ANTOINE SUMMONS
PASTOR GREGORY
For the past year Pastor Gregory had been living in a
squalid boarding-house, at the far end of a block of tenement-
houses, the dwellers in which were mostly Armenian work-
men. The Pastor was carrying on a mission amongst them.
Antoine had the greatest difficulty in waking the night-
watchman, an unkempt Levantine, who was snoring fully
dressed on a bench in the hall.
‘Yes, sir. Master wanting Pastor Gregory? I knowing him,
sir. Please to kindly step upstairs.’
The worthy missioner occupied an attic on the top floor of
the over-crowded hovel. The sweltering heat of a July night
was churning up a mingled stench of refuse-bins and grease,
which brought to mind the rancid smells of an Arab back-
street.
At the night-watchman’s timid rap on his door, Gregory
could be heard scrambling out of bed at once. ‘The “sleep of
the just,” ’ Antoine smiled to himself, ‘is obviously a light one.’
The latch slid back and the Pastor appeared, holding a small,
smoky oil-lamp.
He cut an amazing figure, clad in an immensely long night-
shirt that decorously concealed even his ankles. As he was
unable to sleep without constant pressure on his liver, he had
tightly swarthed his waist in a girdle of brown flannel, the
effect of which was to make the upper part of the night-shirt
bulge like a woman’s blouse, while the lower half bellied like
a skirt. With his bare feet, skinny arms, lank locks and spectral
pallor, he brought to mind a wizard out of the Arabian Nights.
He did not recognize Antoine at first, but no sooner had the
latter spoken a few words than he understood everything.
200
SUNDAY, JULY I9
Without answering or wasting a moment, while Antoine,
standing in the doorway, went on with his explanation, he had
fixed the end of his girdle to the iron bed-post and, to unwind
the numerous layers of flannel, had begun whirling himself
round, like a dancing dervish, faster and faster.
Antoine, who had difficulty in keeping a sober face, was now
describing the operation and the difficulty of extracting the
bullet.
‘Ah ! Ah !’ the dervish panted derisively. ‘Forget about the
revolver. Let that bullet be. What we’ve got to stimulate
is the — the life-urge.’
Waving his arms, he flashed resentful glances at the visitor.
When the unpeeling process was complete, he moved forward
and brought close to Antoine’s eyes his angular, misshapen face,
with the perpetually twitching brows. Then he chuckled to
himself soundlessly.
‘Poor dear doctor, my bearded enemy of yore !’ he exclaimed
in a tone of heartfelt pity. ‘You think to cure diseases, but it’s
you and your blaspheming ilk who cause disease — by pro-
claiming it exists. Nonsense ! I say to you : Let the Light enter
in. Christ is the only healer. Who raised Lazarus from the
dead? Could joa do as much, poor, benighted doctor?’
Antoine, waiting at the door, made no reply.
‘Man is divine,’ Gregory announced in a gruff voice. He had
backed against the wall and was stooping to put on his shoes.
‘Jesus knew in His heart He was divine. And I’m divine. And
so are we all.’ He worked his feet into the heavy black shoes
which he had left laced. ‘But he who said, “the letter killeth,”
was killed by the law. And Christ was killed by law. Man has
borne in mind only the letter of the law. There’s not one
church in existence that is truly founded on the spirit of
Christ’s teachings. All the churches are founded solely on the
letter of His gospel.’
Without the least break in his flow of words, he was bustling
about the room with the slapdash, blundering alacrity typical
of neurasthenics.
‘God is All in All. He is the supreme source of light and
warmth.’ With a vindictive tug he whipped his trousers off the
H*
201
SUMMER, 1914
window-hasp. Each movement of his had the startling sudden-
ness of an electric flash. ‘God is All,’ he repeated, in a louder
tone, for he had turned towards the wall to button up his fly.
When that was done he spun round on his heel and shot
Antoine a look of dark defiance.
‘God is all, and there is no place for evil in Him.’ His voice
was stern. ‘I tell you, my poor dear doctor, there’s not one
atom of evil or ill-will in the universal All.’
He slipped into his black alpaca coat, put on a grotesque little
felt hat and in a surprisingly hearty tone — as if the sensation of
being dressed had raised his spirits — ejaculated,‘GlorybetoGod !,’
rolling his eyes towards the ceiling and touching his hat politely.
Then, lowering his gaze, he stared at Antoine with a far-
away expression, and murmured : ‘Poor Therese ! Poor dear
lady!’ Tears glistened in his eyes. It was as if only now his
thoughts had turned to the tragedy which had brought
Antoine to his door. ‘And poor dear Jerome!’ he sighed. ‘Poor
sluggish heart, was life too much for you? Could you not put
away from you the Negative? . . . May our Christ Jesus give
him the strength to cast off the works of darkness and put on
the armour of light! I am coming to you, poor sinner. I’m on
my way to you.’ He went up to Antoine. ‘Let’s start,’ he said.
‘Bring me to him.’
Before blowing out the lamp, he took a taper from the tail-
pocket of his coat and lit it. Then he opened the door.
‘Go ahead!’
Antoine obeyed. Stretching forth his arm, Gregory held the
taper aloft to light the steps.
‘Christ said men should not put their candle under a bushel
but on a candlestick, for it to give light unto all. It is Christ
who lights a candle in our hearts. Poor little candle, how often
it burns low and wavers and gives off a noisome smoke! Alas
for us ! Let us pray Him that our light may burn with a bright,
steady flame, so that it may drive back the world of matter
into the outer darkness.’
While, clinging to the banisters, Antoine made his way down
the narrow staircase the Pastor went on murmuring phrases
that sounded like an exorcism. The words grew less and less
202
SUNDAY, JULY ig
intelligible, but Antoine noticed that ‘matter’ and ‘darkness’
kept on recurring, always on a note of rancour.
As they came out into the courtyard Antoine said : ‘I’ve my
car here. You can go in it to the Nursing Home, and I’ll join
you there in an hour or so.’
Gregory made no objection, but before getting into the car he
flashed at the younger man a look that was so keen and seemed
so understanding that Antoine felt a flush rising to his cheeks.
‘Still,’ he reflected, ‘he can’t possibly know where I’m going.’
With a sense of vast relief he watched the car recede into the
greyness of the dawn.
A light, cool breeze met him at the street-corner; evidently
it had been raining somewhere near by. Cheerful as a schoolboy
who has just escaped from a long detention, Antoine almost
ran to the nearest main thoroughfare and hailed a taxi.
‘To the Avenue de Wagram.’
He had the driver stop fifty yards from the house, jumped
briskly out, ran up the side-street and opened the door quietly.
No sooner had he entered than his face lit up. That was
Anne’s perfume — a heavy, cloying scent with a tang more of
resin than of flowers, that crept into the throat and set the
senses tingling. It was less an aroma than something to be
tasted — and Antoine relished it.
‘Heady perfumes seem to be in my line,’ Antoine smiled to
himself, remembering with a thrill the ambergris necklace
that Rachel wore.
Stealthily he crept into the bathroom which the dawn was
flooding with cool, pale light. He undressed quickly and
standing in the bath, squeezed out a large sponge over his
shoulders. As the water trickled down his back it evaporated
in his body’s warmth like water steaming off heated metal, and
he had an exquisite sensation of his fatigue flowing away under
its cold caress. Bringing his mouth down to the tap, he drank
deeply of the ice-cool water. Then softly as a cat he tip-toed
into the bedroom.
A little yawn, a faint, dulcet sound rising from the carpet,
reminded him of Laddie’s presence. He felt a small cold muzzle,
a silken ear tickling his ankles.
203
SUMMER, 1914
The curtains were drawn. The bedside lamp shed a soft
dawnlike sheen, tinged with the roseate glow that Antoine
had admired an hour before, when crossing the Seine. Anne
lay asleep in the big bed, her face turned to the wall, her head
nestling in the crook of her bare arm. Fashion papers were
strewn on the floor, and in the ash-tray on the table was a
little pyramid of half-burnt cigarettes.
Standing at the bedside, Antoine gazed down at the dark
luxuriance of her hair, her slim neck and shoulders, and the
graceful outline of her limbs under the counterpane. ‘For
once so helpless !’ he mused. Seldom did Anne rouse in him any
such tenderly protective feelings; as a rule he merely reacted
with a sort of sporting zest to the passionate, insatiable desire
she lavished on him. Smiling, he dallied with the pleasure of
voluptuous suspense, postponing the thrill he knew was waiting
for him there, close at hand — a thrill of which not Jacques
nor Jerome, nor Gregory, nor anyone in the wide world could
now deprive him. But then the desire to plunge his face into
the scented darkness of her hair, to strain to his breast that
warm, supple form and weld their bodies into one, grew so
imperious that the smile died on his lips. Warily, holding his
breath, he untucked a corner of the bed and with a strong,
sinuous movement, wriggled in beside her. She gave a hoarse,
quickly stifled cry, swung herself round towards him, and
passed from sleep to waking in his arms.
24
Monday, July 20
JACQUES* DAY IN PARIS. BEFORE RETURNING TO GENEVA HE
LOOKS UP DANIEL AT THE NURSING HOME
Jacques woke early, with an impression of being in good
fettle for the day. ‘There’s no time to lose,’ he murmured as
he sprang out of bed, ‘if I’m to catch the 5 p.m. train.’
204
MONDAY, JULY 20
But hardly was he on his feet than he grew aware of some-
thing weighing on his mind ; he still was haunted by the events
of the night before.
He dressed rapidly and went down to telephone to Antoine.
Fontanin was not dead ; the coma might last another twenty-
four hours or even longer. There was no hope of saving him.
Jacques informed his brother that they would not be seeing
each other again, as he was returning to Switzerland that day.
After paying the hotel bill, he went to the Gare de I’Est and
left his valise at the cloak-room.
Throughout the day he hurried from one place to the other,
calling on certain ‘knowledgeable chaps,’ whose addresses
Richardley had given him. There were six or seven such
visits to be made.
A vast movement was on foot in all the left-wing groups to
scotch the war-menace. It seemed that the union of the various
parties had at last been definitely achieved. On this point the
latest news was more than reassuring.
And yet he could not shake off his feeling of apprehension ;
no sooner was he alone than stealthily its shadow fell across
his mood, darkening it with an inexplicable premonition of
futility. Feverishly, bathed in perspiration, he rushed to and
fro across Paris, constantly changing his mind and his direction,
cutting conversations short, hastily abandoning at the last
moment an interview to have which he had spent a half-hour
on the way. Streets, houses, the passers-by, even his comrades,
all had a hostile air, unlike their normal selves. On all sides,
he seemed to be fretting against iron bars that hemmed him
in like a caged beast. At certain moments, indeed, a feeling
of actual physical sickness swept over him; his hands went
clammy, his chest seemed gripped in a vice, his head was
swimming, and an uprush of unformulated terror made him
gasp for breath.
‘What on earth can be wrong with me?’ he wondered.
Still, by four he had got through his most urgent tasks, and
was free to leave. He was all eagerness to be back in Geneva
and, at the same time, inexplicably dreaded quitting Paris.
Suddenly he thought: ‘Why not wait till the night train?
205
SUMMER, 1914
I’d have time to drop in at the Croissant, the Humanite, and the
Progris offices, and I might attend the meeting in the Avenue
de Clichy and pick up some news how things are going in
the Arsenals.’
He had learned there was to be a gathering at one of the
cafes in the Avenue de Clichy; it had been organized by the
Dockers’ Union. There he would be sure to meet the strike-
leaders detailed to proceed to seaports on the West Coast
where strikes were being fomented. He would do well to glean
some information on these projects.
But another thought had been preying on his mind all day,
the thought that Daniel was now in Paris. Obviously he could
go back without getting in touch with him. But Daniel would
be sure to learn about his presence here. ‘If only I could have
met him,’ Jacques thought, ‘without going to the Nursing
Home!’ Abruptly he made up his mind. ‘I’ll wait for the night
express. If I go to Neuilly after dinner I shall see Daniel, and
there won’t be much risk of my meeting her.'
In pursuance of his plan he left the Progres office at half-past
eight. He had looked in there on the off chance, after the
Dockers’ Union meeting, and had had the luck of running
into Burot, a sub-editor commissioned to collect for the
Humanite all the news relating to the Arsenals in Western
France.
He heartened himself to face the trip to Neuilly, with the
consoling thought : ‘Anyhow, to-morrow I shall be in Geneva.’
He was going down the narrow spiral staircase leading from
the mezzanine to the ground-floor cafe, when a friendly hand
clapped his shoulder.
‘Eh, boy, so you’re in Paris !’
Even in the semi-darkness there was no mistaking Mourlan,
with his deep voice and broad accent. He wore his hair extrava-
gantly long and had the look of an aged, swarthy Christ; the
loose blouse worn by French compositors was his invariable
garb, winter and summer through.
In the heroic days of the Dreyfus Case, Mourlan had launched
a ‘subversive’ news bulletin, reproduced by cyclostyle and circu-
lated weekly amongst a select few. Thereafter his Etendard
206
MONDAY, JULY 20
had settled into a little revolutionary news-sheet which Mourlan
continued to edit with the help of unpaid collaborators. Now
and then Jacques sent him a news-story, or the translation of
an article in the foreign Press. His publication had a tone of
logical intransigence which appealed to Jacques. From the
standpoint of an uncompromising socialist Mourlan attacked
the Party officials and especially the Jaures group, the ‘trim-
mers’ as he called them.
He had taken a fancy to Jacques. He liked the ‘young ’uns’
for their keenness and intractability. Though poorly educated,
he had a nimble wit, paradoxical and garrulous, and his
accent, that of the old-time Paris working-man, gave raciness
to his humour. For years he had been struggling, almost
single-handed, to keep his newspaper afloat. He was feared.
Solidly entrenched in his orthodoxy, fortified by the life of
militant poverty he led, and whole-heartedly devoted to the
revolutionary cause, he harried without pity the politicians
of the Party, denounced their slightest errors, showed up their
compromises — and his blows always struck home. The men he
trounced revenged themselves by spreading damaging rumours
concerning him. He had once owned a bookshop specializing
in socialist literature, in the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, but his
enemies averred that the bulk of his trade was done in porno-
graphic books, as indeed was not impossible. His private life,
moreover, did not inspire confidence. The little offices of the
austere Etendard in the Rue de la Roquette were frequented
by women of the easiest virtue, hailing from the stews in the
Rue de Lappe. The ladies paying these neighbourly visits
brought him sweets, for which he had a weakness. They talked
in shrill voices, wrangled, and sometimes came to blows.
Then the worthy Apostle would rise and, laying down his
pipe, seize the belligerents each by an arm, and throw them
out into the staircase ; after which he resumed the conversation
at the point where he had dropped it.
He seemed in a gloomy mood as he accompanied Jacques
to the street.
‘Not a bean in the till !’ He pointed the remark by turning
out both pockets of his black blouse simultaneously. ‘If a spot
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SUMMER, 1914
of cash don’t come my way before next Thursday, the next
number of Etendard’s up the spout !’
‘That surprises me,’ Jacques said. T noticed that your
circulation was going up.’
‘I should say so ! There’s new “subscribers” coming in all the
time. Trouble is they don’t pay. If it was a money-making
concern o’ course I wouldn’t hesitate; I’d stop sending out
their copies. But what do I run it for, lad? For propaganda.
Well then, what’s to be done? Cut down expenses? I do every-
thing myself. To start with I allowed myself a hundred francs
a month out of the takings. But I couldn’t bring myself to draw
’em more than once. I live on hunks of bread and cheese, like
a bloody tramp. I’m up to the eyes in debt. And it’s been like
that these eighteen years ! . . . But let’s talk o’ something more
important. What do they think in Switzerland about these
ugly rumours buzzing around? Personally, I’m an old hand, I
ain’t surprised at nothing. I seen too many things in my days.
That business in ’83, for instance. I was only twenty then, but
I used to trot round every evening to the offices of La Revolte.
That name don’t mean anything to you, I opine. Likely you
wouldn’t even know that in ’83 those four fine old fly-by-
nights — England, Germany, Austria, and Roumania — were on
the brink of launching a slap-up European war against Russia,
taking advantage of France’s isolation of course. And bloody
nearly brought it off, my lad ! Put that in your pipe and smoke
it! Nothing’s changed. It’s always the same old game. Pat-
riotism, the national honour — they blithered about it then, as
they’re doing now. But what lay underneath? Commercial
jealousy, tariff problems, the usual big-business ramp.
‘No, nothing’s changed, except one thing. We’ve no Kropot-
kin nowadays. In ’83 Kropotkin worked like a nigger, fighting
the gang who had the European Press in their pay: Anzin,
Krupp, Armstrong, and the rest of them. He gave them the
hell of a trouncing, did old Kropotkin. I’ve dug up his articles,
and I’m republishing three in my next issue. You must read
them, lad ; there’s useful stuff in ’em for all you lads to browse
on.’
The veteran pacificist- in-arms was grinning broadly; his
208
MONDAY, JULY 20
eyes were twinkling. He had quite forgotten that a hundred
and eighty francs, of which he had not the first centime, were
needed before he could get that ‘next number’ out.
Jacques took his leave. ‘I must get the Etendard included in
our anti-war campaign list,’ he was thinking. He resolved to
speak about it at Geneva and, if possible, have a subsidy
remitted to Mourlan.
He had not dined and, before taking the underground for
Neuilly at the Bourse station, dropped in for a sandwich at
the Cafe du Croissant. Several of the Humanite staff, following
the Editor’s lead, patronized this cafe-restaurant at the corner
of the Rue Montmartre.
Jaur^s was seated in his usual corner near the window,
dining with three friends. As he passed the table, Jacques
waved a friendly greeting, but the ‘Skipper,’ who was bending
over his plate, failed to notice him. His shoulders hunched,
his neck hidden by his beard, he let the others chatter away,
while with thoughtless gluttony he despatched a plateful of
mutton and beans. The big attache-case, bulging with dossiers,
that he carried with him everywhere, lorded it, within arm’s
reach, on the other side of the table. On top of the attache-case
lay a pile of newspapers and pamphlets and a large paper-
bound book.
Jacques, who knew that Jaures was an indefatigable reader,
recalled an anecdote which Stefany (who had heard it from
Marius Moutet) had retailed to him two days before. When
recently travelling with Jaures, Moutet had been amazed one
day to see him poring over — of all things — a Russian grammar.
In answer to his question Jaures had said, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world : ‘Of course I’m learning Russian,
and all of you should hurry up and do the same. Quite likely
Russia’s on the eve of playing a most important part in
European affairs.’
Sitting with his back to the light, Jacques watched the famous
man at table, and wondered if he were paying the least attention
to what the others said. That was a question he had put himself
on several occasions when he had come in contact with Jaures.
Whenever he chanced not to be speaking, he seemed lost in
209
SUMMER, 1914
a ruminative silence listening to a secret music murmuring
within his mind.
Suddenly Jacques saw him raise his head, pass his napkin
quickly across his lips, puff out his chest and begin speaking.
Under the lowering brows his keen, restless eyes flashed
glances round the room. Set back in the swarthy beard, the
open mouth with the drooping corners brought to mind the
horn of a loud-speaker, or, at certain angles, the black
mouthpiece of a tragic mask. He gave the impression not so
much of addressing any one of those around him as of thinking
aloud, breaking a lance with an invisible opponent. In his
mental make-up thought and controversy were so intimately
allied that only in discussion did his mind work at full pressure.
It was hard to catch the words, for Jaur^s was speaking in a
low tone — as low, that is to say, as his vocal organs, trained to
public speaking and richly sonorous, permitted him. Never-
theless, across the hubbub of many voices in the cafe Jacques
distinguished unmistakably the very personal timbre of Jaur^s’
voice, with its low, throbbing accents like the drone of a
muted orchestra accompanying the soaring phrases of the
vocalist. And that familiar undertone evoked a host of memories
in his mind : the hectic atmosphere of public meetings, the
clash of partisans, dramatic perorations, storms of applause
from frenzied crowds.
Carried away by his subject, Jaures had thrust aside his
half-full plate and was leaning forwards over the table, with
lowered brows, like a bull ready to charge. Beating the rhythm
of his phrases, his clenched fists rose and fell upon the table
edge, not violently but with the stolid cadence of a steam-
hammer. And when, pressed for time, Jacques left the cafe,
Jaures was still declaiming, thumping the marble with his fists.
This heartening glimpse of the great orator had quickened
his energy, and Jacques was still under its tonic influence
when he reached the entrance gates of a large building in the
Boulevard Bineau. ‘Clinique Bertrand’ ; that was the place.
It was quite dark, but Jacques crossed the garden without
slackening pace; he could not bring himself to look up at the
lighted windows.
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MONDAY, JULY 20
The old woman who opened the door to him informed him
in a quavering voice that the poor gentleman was still alive
and his son had arrived late in the afternoon. Jacques asked
her to go and fetch Daniel. But the door-keeper had no helper
and could not leave her post.
‘The Ward Sister will go and tell him,’ she said. ‘You’ve
only to go up to the second floor, sir.’
After a brief hesitation Jacques complied.
On the first floor landing, he looked round, but saw no one ;
the long corridor, bathed in a soft pale glow, was silent as the
grave. The second floor was equally silent and along the endless
white-walled corridor no one was in view. There was nothing
for it but to hunt for the Ward Sister. After waiting some
minutes he began walking down the corridor. His feeling of
apprehension had given place to a vague curiosity, which
encouraged him to take risks.
He had not observed a shadowy form seated in a window
bay. As he came up, the girl turned and rose abruptly. Jenny !
It was almost as if he had foreseen this meeting, for he felt
no real surprise as he murmured to himself: ‘Well, it’s hap-
pened !’ And at once he noticed that she was bare-headed . . .
as in the past.
The girl’s first gesture had been to push back her hair, which
she realized was in disorder, and the soft pallor of her forehead
under the subdued light gave an impression of inviolable
purity, if not of gentleness.
For two seconds they faced each other, with wildly beating
hearts. At last he managed to speak, in a voice roughened
by emotion.
‘Please excuse me . . . The concierge said . . .’
He was struck by her pallor, bloodless lips, peaked nostrils.
Her eyes were tense but expressionless; all that he read in
them was a firm resolve not to quail, not to avert her gaze.
‘I came to enquire . . .’
Jenny made a vague gesture implying that all hope was lost.
‘. . . and to see Daniel,’ he added.
With an effort, as if she were swallowing a pill, she muttered
some indistinct words, then made a hasty move along the
21 1
SUMMER, 1914
corridor towards the sitting-room. Jacques began to follow
her, but stopped half way. She opened the door. He thought
she was going to call Daniel. But holding the door open, she
remained there, half turned towards him, with a harsh ex-
pression on her face, and her eyes fixed on the floor.
‘I’d rather not . . . Jacques began, moving towards her,
‘I mean, I don’t want to disturb. . .’
She made no reply, did not raise her eyes. She seemed to be
waiting, with suppressed impatience, for him to enter. Once he
had crossed the threshold, she let the door swing to behind him.
Madame de Fontanin was sitting on the sofa at the far end
of the room, with a young man in uniform beside her. A helmet
and service belt lay on the floor beside him.
‘You!’
Daniel had risen to his feet, his eyes aglow with joy and
wonder. Unmoving, he was staring at the new Jacques before
him, the young man with the sturdy shoulders and resolute
chin, so little like his boyhood’s friend. And Jacques, too,
stood for a moment motionless, his eyes held by the tall young
N.C.O. with bronzed cheeks and close-cropped hair, who
at last began to move towards him stiffly, with an unexpected
jingle of spurred boots ....
Daniel had taken his friend by the arm and was steering
him towards his mother. Without betraying the least vexation-
or surprise, Madame de Fontanin raised her weary eyes
towards Jacques, holding out her hand. In a voice as listless
as her gaze, she said quietly, as though it were only a day
since they last had met :
‘How do you do, Jacques?’
With that easy, slightly punctilious grace he had inherited
from his father, Daniel bent towards Madame de Fontanin.
‘If you’ll excuse me. Mother dear. I’ll go downstairs with
Jacques for a moment. Sure you don’t mind?’
A tremor passed through Jacques’ body. He had recognized
his Daniel, the Daniel of his youth, in his intonation, in the
small, faintly embarrassed smile that screwed up the left corner
of his lips, in the tender, respectful way he had of pronouncing
‘Mother dear,’ separating the syllables of the word ‘mother.’
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MONDAY, JULY 20
Madame de Fontanin nodded gently, casting an affectionate
glance on the two young men.
‘Of course, my dear, go with your friend. There’s nothing
I need you for just now.’
‘Let’s go to the garden,’ Daniel suggested, his hand still
resting on Jacques’ shoulder.
Quite unconsciously he had reverted to that habit of his
boyhood, which their difference in stature still justified as
much as ever. Daniel had always been taller than Jacques, and
his uniform brought out his height. The slimness of his figure
above the waist, in the dark, close-fitting tunic with the white
collar, contrasted with the baggy red breeches and thick
leggings that gave his limbs a disproportionate bulk. His
hob-nailed soles clanged on the tiled floor of the corridor and
the loud, martial footfalls seemed an outrage on the sleep-
bound silence of the building. Uncomfortably aware of this,
he refrained from speech, as leaning on his friend to keep
himself from slipping, he walked towards the stairs.
Jacques asked himself: What about Jenny? and once more
he felt a sudden contraction of his throat that was like a spasm
of fear. He kept his head high and his eyes fixed on the floor
as he walked. When they came to the stairs, involuntarily he
looked back, and cast a questing glance along the empty
corridor; a feeling of disappointment, touched with rancour,
stole over him.
Daniel halted at the first step.
‘So you’re staying in Paris?’ The cheerful tone struck a
contrast with the sadness of his look.
Jacques thought: That means Jenny hasn’t mentioned me
to him.
‘I should have left already,’ he answered briskly. ‘I’m
taking a train back to-night.’ Daniel looked so crestfallen
that he made haste to add : ‘As a matter of fact I stayed on
just to see you. I’ve got to be at Geneva to-morrow.’
Daniel gazed at him pensively; his eyes were full of silent
interrogation. Why must Jacques be at Geneva? The mystery
surrounding Jacques’ life irritated him, but intimidated by
his friend’s reserve, he dared not question him as yet. Without
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SUMMER, 1914
speaking, he took his hand from Jacques’ shoulder, grasped
the banister, and began walking downstairs. All his joy had
left him now. What was the use of this unlooked-for visit,
which had kindled his desire for an exchange of confidences,
if Jacques was going away and would be lost to him once more?
The garden, which had just been watered, was empty and
softly sparkling under the glow of lamps dotted amongst the
trees.
‘Have a smoke?’ Daniel suggested.
Taking his cigarette-case from his pocket, he eagerly lit a
cigarette. For a moment the match-flame illumined his features.
Their most striking change was that an open-air life in the
Vosges had tanned his pale complexion, which in the past
had so noticeably contrasted with his dark eyes and hair and
the slender line of his moustache.
Side by side, in silence, they turned into a winding path at
the end of which stood a ring of white garden seats.
‘Shall we sit here?’ Daniel asked and, without waiting for an
answer, dropped heavily into a chair. ‘I’m dead beat. It was
a perfectly damnable journey.’ For some moments he could
not shake off the memory of the day he had gone through in a
jolting, stuffy railway-carriage, smoking cigarette after cigar-
ette, his eyes fixed on the landscape scudding past, and his
mind trapped in a maze of conflicting — but all equally lugu-
brious — theories as to his father’s ‘accident,’ while unforeseeable
events were taking place in far-off Paris. ‘Damnable !’ he
repeated. Then pointing with the red tip of his cigarette
towards the window behind which his father lay dying, he
added in a sombre voice: ‘It was bound to end that way,
sooner or later.’
The clean, cool odour of freshly watered soil was rising from
the flower-beds through the darkness, and now and then,
soft as a warm breath, the night-wind wafted to them a bitter-
sweet aroma, like that of some pungent medicine, which did
not come from the dispensary but from a little Japanese
varnish-tree in a remote corner of the grounds.
Seeing Daniel in uniform beside him had revived Jacques’
haunting premonition of a coming war.
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MONDAY, JULY 20
‘Did you have any trouble getting leave?’ he asked.
‘Not the slightest. Why?’ When Jacques said nothing, he
continued tranquilly: ‘They’ve given me four days, with the
possibility of an extension. But that won’t be needed. Your
brother, who was there when I arrived, told me quite frankly
there isn’t any hope.’
He fell silent, then went on abruptly: ‘And it’s best so.’
Again he pointed towards the building. ‘It’s a horrible thing
to say, but, considering how things are, none of us dare hope
that he will live.’ His voice grew harsh. ‘Of course I know his
death won’t mend matters, but anyhow it cuts short an episode
in my father’s life that would have had dreadful consequences
for Mother, for him, for all of us.’ He turned a little towards
Jacques. ‘There was a warrant out for his arrest,’ he added
with a break in his voice, a rageful, rasping sob. Closing his
eyes, Daniel leant back in his chair. For a moment the gleam
of a lamp lit up his handsome forehead, the upper line of which
formed two white half-moons parted by a promontory of
dark hair.
Jacques would have liked to put in some consoling word,
but his lonely life and political associations had unfitted him
for expansiveness. Still he drew nearer Daniel and touched his
arm. Under his palm he felt the rough texture of the tunic.
A curious odour of wool, dubbin, and warm leather, came from
Daniel and, when he moved, mingled with the fragrance of
the night-bound garden.
Four years had elapsed since Jacques last had met his friend.
Despite the letters that had passed between them after M.
Thibault’s death, and despite Daniel’s repeated invitations, he
had never brought himself to make the trip to Luneville. He
dreaded meeting Daniel face to face; in affectionate, if in-
frequent, correspondence it seemed to him their friendship,
such as it now was, could best fulfil itself. There could be no
question of its persistence and vitality; indeed the only real
attachments Jacques had ever known were for Daniel and
Antoine. But it was a heritage from the past, that past from
which Jacques had deliberately cut adrift, and of which he
hated being reminded.
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SUMMER, 1914.
dig down into the depths of his being, and unearth that part
of him which has always been the least appreciated, the most
scorned, and dare to say: “This is my truest self”? To shout
at all the world, “I can do without you!” No? Do you mean
to say you can’t understand that?’
‘Indeed, I do understand,’ Daniel murmured. ‘I understand
quite well.’
At first he had yielded unthinkingly to a subtle delectation,
the thrill of listening to that masterful, high-strung, over-
emotional voice which made him feci he had regained the
Jacques of former days. But after a while he had become
convinced that there was something insincere in this tirade;
Jacques’ outburst had been above all an evasion of the issue.
And then he realized that never would Jacques broach the
frank explanation that would have cleared things up between
them. He must abandon hope of ever knowing the truth. Worse
still, he must resign himself to losing that unique friendship
of which he had been so proud. And with the vivid intuition
of his loss, he felt a pang of grief. Another added to the many
griefs assailing him that night . . .
For some minutes they remained thus facing each other,
without moving, without exchanging a word, even a glance.
At last Daniel drew in his legs — he had kept them stretched
out full length till now — and passed his hand over his forehead.
‘Well, I’m afraid I must be going back there now.’ All the
singing tone had left his voice.
‘Yes,’ Jacques stood up at once. ‘I’ve got to be going, too.’
Daniel, too, rose from his seat.
‘Thanks for coming.’
‘Please ask your mother to forgive me for keeping you so
long.’
Each waited for the other to make the first move.
‘What time’s your train?’ Daniel asked.
‘Eleven fifty.’
‘From the Gare de Lyon?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll take a taxi, I suppose?’
‘Don’t need it. There’s a tram that goes there.’
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MONDAY, JULY 20
They fell silent, ashamed to hear themselves saying such
things to each other.
T’ll come with you as far as the gate,’ Daniel said as they
entered the drive.
They crossed the garden without exchanging another word.
As they reached the street a car stopped beside the entrance.
A hatless young woman and an elderly man j'umped out of it.
Their faces expressed consternation. They hurried past the
two young men, who followed them for a moment with their
eyes — less out of curiosity than of compunction.
To cut short the leave-taking Jacques held out his hand.
Daniel gripped it without speaking. For an instant they gazed
silently at each other. On Daniel’s lips hovered a dim smile,
which Jacques was almost too weary to reciprocate. But he
walked through the gateway briskly enough, and crossed the
wide, brightly lit pavement. Before starting across the street
he looked back. Daniel had not moved. Jacques saw him
wave his hand, then swing round and vanish amongst the
shadows of the trees.
In the distance, across the leafage, shone a row of lighted
windows . . . Jenny.
Then, without waiting for his tram, Jacques started off in
the direction of Paris — of his train, of Geneva — almost at a
run, as if Death were at his heels.
219
PART II
I
Monday, July 20
ANNE AND ANTOINE DINE AT A ROADHOUSE NEAR PARIS
I N the large reception-room with the lacquer screens Madame
de Battaincourt sat waiting. (Antoine had forbidden Leon
once for all to show any caller whomsoever into his private
study.) The windows were open. The July day was drawing
to a sultry close. With a lithe movement of her shoulders Anne
let fall her light evening wrap on to the back of the chair.
‘The nasty man likes making us wait, doesn’t he, Laddie?’
she sighed.
The Pekinese, a small sandy blur of silken fluff, lazily curled
up on the carpet, feebly pricked his ears. Anne had bought
him as far back as the 1900 Exhibition, and, for all his decrep-
itude and surliness, she still persisted in taking the grotesque
little creature with her everywhere she went.
Of a sudden Laddie raised his head; his mistress followed
suit. Both had recognized Antoine’s rapid stride, and his
brisk way of opening and closing doors.
When he entered he was wearing the preoccupied look of
the busy doctor. His lips lightly brushed Anne’s hair, then
slipped down to her nape, making her shudder deliciously.
Raising both arms, she slowly passed her fingers over the high-
domed, handsome forehead, the stern line of his eyebrows;
then softly stroked his cheeks. For a moment she cupped
with her hands his under-jaw, the sturdy Thibault chin that
she loved and feared at once. At last she looked up and rose to
her feet, smiling towards him.
‘Do look at me, Tony! Yes, your eyes are on me, but that
doesn’t mean you see me. How I hate it when you put on that
high-and-mighty air!’
He took her by the shoulders and held her in front of him,
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SUMMER, 1914
pressing his fingers on her shoulder-blades. Then, still holding
her, he moved back a little and swept her body with a possessive
gaze from head to foot. What had most of all drawn him to
Anne was not so much the beauty that still was hers as that
she was so obviously a woman made for love.
She yielded herself to his scrutiny, gazing at him with eyes
aglow with pleasure and vitality.
T’ll do a quick change, and be with you in a jiffy,’ he said,
pressing her gently back into the chair.
Nowadays he dressed for dinner so often that five or ten
minutes were enough for the entire ritual — shaving, shower-
bath, getting into a stiff shirt, white waistcoat and the rest of it.
All had been laid out in readiness, and Leon handed the
garments to him, one by one, with downcast eyes and naively
priestlike gestures.
‘My straw hat and motoring gloves,’ he murmured.
Before leaving the room he cast a quick, comprehensive
glance at the mirror and pulled down his cuffs. It was only
quite recently that he had learned not to disdain the little
increment of comfort and content which comes from fine
linen, a crisp collar, well-cut clothes. He had come to regard
the relaxation of a rather extravagant ‘night out’ as no more
than his due after a hard day’s work, and indeed, a good thing
for his health ; and he liked to have Anne to share it with him
— though he was quite capable on occasion of enjoying him-
self alone.
‘Where are you taking me to dine to-night?’ Anne asked as
Antoine slipped her cloak around her shoulders, after lightly
kissing her bare neck.
‘It’s much too stuffy in Paris,’ she continued. ‘What about
going to Prat’s, at Marly? Or how about the Coq; it’s more
cheerful, isn’t it?’
‘Rather far out, don’t you think?’
‘That doesn’t matter. And anyhow the road beyond Ver-
sailles has just been repaired.’
She had a way of her own of murmuring ‘Shall we go there?’
or ‘What do you say to this?’ with a little dying fall in hervoice,
and a languid, appealing look in her eyes. Light-heartedly she
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MONDAY, JULY 20
would propose the most fantastic expeditions without a thought
for the distance or the lateness of the hour, for Antoine’s
possible fatigue or preferences — still less for the cost her
caprices might involve.
‘Right-oh! We’ll make it the Coq,' Antoine cheerfully
assented. ‘Up with you. Laddie!’ Stooping, he picked up the
little dog and opened the door for Anne.
She halted in the doorway ; the night-blue cloak, ivory-white
dress and a black lacquer screen behind her composed a
perfect setting for the soft, dusky lustre of her skin. Turning,
she enveloped him with a fond, all-revealing look, whispering
‘My Tony’ so quietly that it seemed the words were not for him.
‘Let’s be off!’ he said.
‘Yes, I suppose we must,’ she sighed, as if their choice of a
restaurant thirty miles from Paris had been a weak concession
to her despot’s whim. And with her head high, with lithe, long
steps, to a low rustle of silken flounces, she gaily crossed the
threshold.
‘When you start walking,’ Antoine murmured in her ear, ‘I
always think of a splendid ship putting out to sea.’
Though his car was powerful and pleasant to handle, Antoine
had lost interest in driving. But he knew that Anne liked
nothing better than such evening jaunts alone together, with-
out the chauffeur.
The sun had set, but the heat was still oppressive. Crossing
the Bois, Antoine took the smaller, unfrequented by-ways
ribboning the forest. The windows of the car were open and
warm airs poured in, laden with woodland odours.
Anne was chattering away and, speaking of her last stay
at Berck, began talking about her husband — a thing she rarely
did.
‘Just think, he didn’t want me to leave. He was simply
beastly about it, why he even started threatening me. Still he
drove me to the station — looking like a martyr, though. When
he was standing on the platform, just before the train went,
what do you think he had the nerve to say to me? “So you’ll
never change?” I looked down at him from the carriage
window. “No” I said — and I said it pretty venomously, take
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SUMMER, 1914
my word for it! And it’s quite true, I shall never change. I
loathe him, and there’s nothing to be done about it.’
Antoine smiled. He rather enjoyed seeing her in a temper,
and had told her once, ‘I like it when that murder light comes
into your eye.’ And now a memory came back to him of de
Battaincourt, her husband, the friend of Daniel and Jacques,
with his deer-like nose and towy hair, his listless, mildly bored
manner — rather a poisonous chap, in fact.
‘And I once was really keen on that fool — imagine it!’
Anne said. ‘Perhaps just for that reason.’
‘What reason?’
‘Because he was so stupid. Because he’d had so few adven-
tures. That struck me then as quite refreshing, it was such a
change. Like starting life all over again. Goodness, what silly
things one does !’
She remembered her resolve to talk oftener about herself,
her past life. Now or never was the moment. She settled
herself comfortably on the seat, rested her head on Antoine’s
shoulder and, gazing vaguely at the road in front, let memory
take charge.
‘I’d used to see him sometimes in Touraine, at meets. I’d
often noticed him looking in my direction, but he never said a
word to me. Then one evening when I was driving home
through the woods, I saw him on the road — he was on foot.
For some reason I was alone. I stopped the car and offered to
give him a lift to Tours. He went crimson, and got in without
saying anything. It was getting dark. Suddenly, just before
we’d reached the toll-gate . . . ’
Antoine listened with half an ear, his attention fixed on the
road ahead, on the rhythm of the engine.
‘Yes,’ he mused, ‘Anne will love other men after me; will
follow her appointed path.’ He had no illusions as to the
impermanence of their liaison. ‘It’s curious how I’ve always
been drawn to women of that sort, strongly sexed women
who’ve scrapped convention.’ He had sometimes wondered
whether this passionate companionship which was all he wanted
from his mistresses were not a rather imperfect form of love.
The second best, perhaps. Hadn’t Studler said to him only
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MONDAY, JULY 20
the Other day, ‘You confuse lust with love’? Well, imperfect
or not, that form of love was his, and it suited him. For it made
no inroads on his life as a hard-working man of science deter-
mined to let nothing in the world come between him and his
vocation. In the course of that talk with Studler the ‘Caliph’
had quoted the words of a young writer named Peguy whom
he knew. ‘To love is to declare the one you love is in the right,
even when he or she is wrong.’ A hard saying, and Antoine
had rebelled indignantly against it. Love of that kind, such all-
consuming, infatuated, brain-destroying love, always inspired
him with horror and amaze, even with a certain disgust. . . .
They had come to the bridge over the Seine, after crossing
which the car took the steep Suresnes hill at an effortless thirty.
Suddenly Anne raised her right arm and pointed. ‘There’s a
little pub down there where they have wonderful fish and
chips.’
The ‘pub’ in question was the one where Delorme had
always used to take her. He was an ex-medical student who
had opened a chemist’s shop in the western suburbs and for
several years, until the previous winter — until, that is, Anne
had succeeded in breaking herself of the drug habit — had
recompensed the favours of this heaven-sent mistress by keeping
her supplied with morphia. Fearing Antoine might put a
question, she forced herself to laugh.
‘It’s worth visiting, if only to see the woman who runs it.
A fat old dame with her hair always in curlers and her stockings
concertina-ing round her ankles. Personally, I’d rather go bare-
legged than have my stockings sag like that. Don’t you agree?’
‘We’ll go there one Sunday,’ Antoine suggested.
‘No, not a Sunday. You know how I loathe Sundays. Every-
where such beastly crowds of people — who call it their “day of
rest” !’
‘Yes,’ Antoine said ironically. ‘It’s a blessing, obviously,
that six days out of seven everyone else is at work.’
She did not catch the mockery in his tone and began laughing
again.'
‘ “Curlers!” I love that word. It sounds so quaintly comic,
doesn’t it? I might call my next dog “Curler” . . . Only I’ll
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SUMMER, 1914
never have another dog.’ Her voice grew earnest. ‘When
Laddie’s quite old I’ll poison him. And I’ll never replace him.’
Antoine smiled and said without turning towards her :
‘What? You’d have the heart to poison Laddie?’
‘Yes.’ Her tone was firm. ‘But only when he’s quite, quite
old and doddering.’
Antoine gave her a quick, keen glance. He was aware of
certain ugly rumours that had circulated after old Goupillot’s
death. Now and again they crossed his mind; usually he
laughed them off. But there were times when Anne inspired
him with something like horror, when he thought, as now:
‘She’d stick at nothing — even at poisoning a husband who’d
grown “quite, quite old and doddering” !’
‘How’d you set about it?’ he asked. ‘Strychnine? Cyanide?’
‘No, I’d use one of the veronal group. Didial’s the best.
Only it’s on the list; one has to have a prescription. We’ll have
to manage with common or garden dial. That do you. Laddie?’
Antoine’s laugh was rather forced.
‘It’s not so easy as all that, hitting the right dose. A gramme
or two too little or too much, and you botch everything.’
‘A gramme or two? For a dog that doesn’t weigh six pounds?
You’re right off the mark, doctor.’ After working it out rapidly
in her head she said calmly: ‘No, for Laddie twenty-five
centigrammes of dial, twenty-eight at most, would do the trick.’
She fell silent. He too said nothing, but their thoughts were
evidently following different roads for presently she added
in a low tone :
‘I’ll never have another dog. Never. Does that surprise you?’
She pressed herself against his shoulder once more. ‘Because
you know, Tony, I’m quite capable of being loyal. Yes, really
faithful.’
The car slowed down for a sharp turn, followed by a level
crossing.
A vague smile hovered on Anne’s lips ; she was gazing at the
road in front.
‘Really and truly, Tony dear, I was born to be a woman
with one great love, one only in her life. It’s not my fault if
I’ve lived — as I have lived. And yet’ — her voice grew emphatic
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MONDAY, JULY 20
— ‘there’s one thing I can truly say : I’ve never lowered myself.’
She spoke in all sincerity; she bad forgotten about Delorme.
‘And I regret nothing,’ she added after a pause.
For a while she kept silence, her forehead nestling on An-
toine’s shoulder, her eyes fixed on the shadowy depths of the
forest and the dancing cloud of midges lit up by the headlights.
Then, ‘It’s curious,’ she said. ‘The happier I am, the less I
feel self-centred. There are times when Td love, oh how I’d
love, to be able to dedicate my life to somebody, or something.’
He was amazed by the emotion in her voice ; he knew she was
sincere, that her social position and her wealth — the reward of
fifteen years’ methodical scheming — had brought her neither
peace of mind nor happiness.
She sighed.
‘Next winter, you know. I’ve quite decided to start a new
life — a life that’s worth while, serves some purpose. And I
want you to help me in it, Tony dear. Will you?’
This was a pet idea of hers, of which she often spoke to
Antoine. And he, too, judged her not incapable of changing her
way of living. With all her faults, she had sterling qualities,
an alert, practical mind, and an indomitable tenacity of
purpose. But to persevere and to achieve her object, he well
knew that she needed someone to play the guardian angel to
her, and palliate her failings — someone like himself. He had
been able to gauge his influence over her during the previous
winter when he had made up his mind to break her of the drug
habit. He had persuaded her to undergo a two months’ treat-
ment at an institution near Paris; the treatment had been
drastic and it had left her in a state of collapse, but definitely
cured.
It was certain that, would he but take the pains to see it
through, he could direct the store of latent energy in Anne to
worthy ends. At a sign from him all her future might be
transformed. But he was quite determined not to make that
sign. Only too clearly he foresaw all the new, time-devouring
responsibilities that would be his, were he to play the rescuer’s
part. Every deed commits its doer; most of all an act of gener-
osity. And Antoine had the course of his own life to steer, his
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SUMMER, 1914
freedom to szifeguard. On that point he was inflexible. Yet
every time he thought of it he had an uneasy feeling — as if
he were deliberately turning away so as not to see the hand of
a drowning woman beckoning in a vain appeal. . . .
That night, as it so happened, the Coq d' Argent was almost
empty.
When the car stopped, maitre d^hStel, waiters, and wine-waiter
flocked forth to greet these two belated patrons, and deferen-
tially escorted them round the garden-restaurant. Hidden
behind a shrubbery a small string orchestra broke into dis-
creetly muted music. Everyone seemed contributing to a well-
#)mposed stage-effect, and even Antoine, as he followed Anne
across the garden, walked with the studied ease of a star actor
making his entrance in a play that he knows well.
The tables were tactfully isolated from each other by privet
hedges and flowers on stands. When at last Anne fixed on a
table her first move was to install her little dog on a cushion
that the proprietor smilingly placed on the ground beside her.
It was a pink cushion, for everything at the Coq was pink,
from the begonias in the flower-beds to the table-cloths, the
parasols and the lanterns hanging from the trees.
Before taking her seat, Anne studied the menu methodically,
for she liked to affect an expert interest in food. Attended by
his minions, the head-waiter stood by, a pencil to his lips,
silently attentive. Anne turned to Antoine and with an un-
gloved finger pointed to certain items. She believed, and with
some reason, that he was jealous of his prerogatives and
would not wish her to address herself directly to any of the
waiters in attendance.
Antoine gave the order in the firm, if genial, tones he employed
on such occasions. The head- waiter took down his instructions
with little gestures of approval and respect. Antoine watched
him writing. The obsequious manners of the staff pleased him
and he was not far from believing, ingenuously enough, that
they actually liked him. ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘why shouldn’t
they?’
‘Oh, what a darling little kitten !’ Anne exclaimed, pointing
to a small black imp of mischief that had just sprung on to the
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MONDAY, JULY 20
buffet and that the waiters were trying to dislodge with scan-
dalized flicks of their napkins. It was a six-weeks-old kitten,
soot-black, with curiously vivid green eyes deep-set in an
enormous head; the little belly was distended, though the
animal looked half-starved.
Anne picked it up with both hands and, laughing, held it
to her cheek.
Antoine smiled, but he felt slightly irritated.
‘Do put it down, Anne. It’s a mass of fleas. And you’ll get
yourself scratched.’
‘No, you’re not a mass of fleas, are you, pussykins?’ Anne
hugged the dirty little creature to her breast and began
stroking its head with her chin. ‘Did you ever see such a tummy !
Like a little football, isn’t it? And the size of his head ! He looks
like an onion that’s sprouting — ever noticed, Tony, the funny
faces onions make when they’re starting to sprout?’
Mastering his impatience, Antoine laughed — rather con-
strainedly. It was so rare for him to laugh that he heard him-
self now with surprise, and suddenly was struck by a peculiar
quality in his laugh. ‘Good Lord !’ he thought with a curious
discomfiture — ‘the way I laughed just then, it sounded exactly
like Father!’ Antoine had never paid heed to M. Thibault’s
laugh during his lifetime, and suddenly, amazingly, to-night
he heard it again, coming from his own mouth!
Anne was trying to force the ugly little animal to stay on
her lap — with dire results for her silk skirt.
‘Naughty pussykins!’ She seemed enchanted by its “naughti-
ness.” ‘Now purr, you little devil ! . . . There you are, he’s
purring ! He understood me. I’m sure he has a soul,’ she added
in all seriousness. ‘Tony dear, do please buy him for me.
He’ll be our mascot. As long as we have him, he’ll keep bad
luck away from us.’
‘There you are!’ Antoine grinned. ‘Now will you dare to
tell me that you’re not superstitious?’
He had already teased her on that score. She had confessed
to him that some nights when she went up to her room and,
feeling restless, could not bring herself to go to bed — because
she had a premonition of misfortune — she would take from
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SUMMER, 1914
the drawer in which she kept the relics of her past, a shabby
old fortune-telling manual and tell her fortune by the cards
till she dropped asleep.
‘You’re right,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m talking nonsense.’
She released the cat; it sprang away rather clumsily and
slunk into the bushes. After making sure they were alone, she
gazed deeply into Antoine’s eyes and whispered :
‘Yes, do lecture me — I adore it. I’ll attend to every word.
I’ll mend my ways. And I’ll become the woman you want me
to be.’
It struck him that perhaps she loved him more than he
would have wished. Smiling, he signed to her to drink her soup,
and she obeyed him like a child, her eyes fixed on the plate.
Then she began speaking of quite different matters — of the
summer holidays which she had decided to spend in Paris so
as not to be away from Antoine; of the sensational murder-
case, in which politics and passion played equal parts, details
of which had been filling several columns of the papers for
some days past.
‘What a nerve she had ! How I’d love to do something like
that ! For you, Tony. To kill someone who wanted to injure
you.’ In the distance the two violins, alto and ’cello began to
play a minuet. For a while she seemed lost in dreams. Then she
added, in a vibrant undertone, like a caress : ‘To kill — for love !’
‘Well, you have the right appearance for that sort of thing,’
Antoine smiled.
She was about to reply when the head-waiter came up
carrying a large silver dish exhaling savoury fumes of salmis',
before carving the pigeons it contained, he reverently presented
it for her inspection.
Antoine observed that tears were trembling on her eyelashes,
and cast her a questioning glance. Unintentionally, had he
wounded her?
‘That’s perhaps truer than you think,’ she sighed, without
looking towards him and in such a puzzling tone that he could
not help thinking once again of Goupillot’s end.
‘How do you mean: “truer’?” He could not conceal his
curiosity.
MONDAY, JULY 20
Struck by his tone, she looked up and caught a curious gleam
in his eye, which baffled her at first. Then suddenly she recalled
their talk about poisons, and Antoine’s questions. She was well
aware of the suspicion that had fixed on her after her husband’s
death ; a local paper had actually published an attack on her in
scantily veiled terms. The effect had been definitely to establish
in the region the legend of an old multimillionaire kept prisoner
in his chateau by a young adventuress whom he had married
late in life, and of the old man’s death one night under cir-
cumstances which had never been cleared up.
Steadying his voice, Antoine repeated :
‘How do you mean : “truer” ?’
‘I mean that I’ve the face of a melodrama heroine,’ she
replied in a calm voice, not wishing to let him see that she had
guessed his thought. She had taken a small mirror from
her bag and was inspecting herself in it with seeming care-
lessness. ‘Look! Is that the face of someone destined to die
tamely in a bed? No, I’ll come to a dramatic end, you’ll see.
One morning I’ll be found lying on my bedroom floor, slabbed
to death. Stark naked — on the carpet — a stiletto in my heart.
Haven’t you noticed that women called Anne, in books, always
die that way? Do you know’ — her eyes were still intent on her
reflected self — ‘I simply hate the thought of looking ugly when
I’m dead I There’s something so ghastly about the white lips
of corpses. I want my lips and face to be made up nicely; as
a matter of fact I’ve mentioned it in my will.’
She was speaking more quickly than was her wont and lisping
a little, as was her way when feeling ill at ease. With a corner
of her handkerchief she dried the tears still lingering on her
cheeks, and stowed away puff, handkerchief, and mirror in
her bag.
‘To tell the truth,’ she confessed, and now a slightly vulgar
accent crept into the deep, melodious voice, ‘I don’t really
mind having the face of a melodrama heroine.’
She turned towards him and saw that he was still watching
her furtively. Then a slow smile crept to her lips and she seemed
to come to a decision.
‘Still, my appearance has played me some nasty tricks,’ she
233 1*
SUMMER, 1914
sighed. ‘Do you know, some people think I poisoned my
first husband?’
For a split second Antoine hesitated ; his eyelids fluttered,
then he murmured :
‘Yes, I know.’
She rested her elbows on the table and, as her eyes sank
deep into her lover’s, she said in a calm, deliberate voice :
‘And do you think me capable of that?’
For all the bravado of her tone, her eyes would not meet
his, and again she gazed straight in front of her.
‘Why not?’ he asked, half bantering, half in earnest.
For some moments she stared pensively at the tablecloth.
The thought that uncertainty might give a certain fillip to
Antoine’s feelings for her crossed her mind ; she was almost
tempted to leave him with his doubts. But no sooner had she
raised her eyes and looked at him than the temptation left her.
‘No,’ she said harshly. ‘The facts aren’t so — so romantic.
As chance would have it, I was alone with Goupillot on the
night he died. But he died a natural death — I had nothing
whatever to do with it.’
Antoine’s silence, the way he was listening, seemed to imply
he looked for further details. She pushed her plate away,
untouched, and took a cigarette from her bag; Antoine let
her light it herself, without a movement. It was one of the
special ‘tea-leaf’ cigarettes that were supplied her from New
York and gave off a heady, acrid aroma of burnt herbs. She
took two or three puffs, leisurely breathed forth the smoke,
then murmured :
‘Are you really interested in all that old gossip?’
‘Yes,’ Antoine answered a shade too soon, too eagerly.
Smiling, she made a little, graceful movement as if to wave
away a childish importunity.
Meanwhile Antoine’s thoughts were wandering far afield. A
remark of Anne’s came back to him. ‘To keep my end up in
life. I’ve developed such a habit of lying that if you catch me
telling you a lie one day, you mustn’t get vexed — but just
point it out to me at once!’ In the present case he hardly knew
what to think, for, on occasion, to serve her ends (as he was well
234
MONDAY, JULY 20
aware) Anne could assume an air of injured innocence that
was highly disconcerting. , . .
‘No! Do you want to choke him? Really you should know
better than to give him bones I’
A young waiter had just placed a bowl in front of Laddie’s
cushion and, through excess of zeal, was about to add the
pigeons’ carcases.
The head-waiter bustled up.
‘Anything you desire, madam?’
‘Nothing, thank you,’ Antoine said curtly; he was feeling
annoyed.
The Pekinese had struggled to his feet and was inspecting
the contents of the bowl. He stretched himself, shook his ears
and sniffed fretfully, then raised his little black snub-nose
towards his mistress with a mournful air.
Anne looked down at him. ‘What’s the trouble,
Laddiekins?’
The maitre d’ hotel echoed : ‘What’s the trouble. Lady
King?’
‘Show me that,’ Anne said, rapping the bowl with her
knuckles. ‘Why, good heavens, it’s stone cold! I told you,
some warm hash. No fat,’ she added severely, pointing to a
small greasy morsel. ‘Some rice, carrots, and a little meat
minced fine. There’s nothing very complicated about that,
surely!’
‘Take it away,’ the maitre-dhdtel commanded.
The young waiter picked up the bowl, stared for a moment
at its contents, then started back submissively to the kitchen.
But before turning he shot a quick glance towards the table
— a glance that Antoine intercepted.
Once they were alone again Antoine turned to Anne.
‘Really darling, don’t you think Master Laddie’s a bit too
fussy about his grub?’
‘That waiter’s a born idiot!’ Anne broke in pettishly. ‘Did
you see the way he stood there gaping at that bowl?’
‘Perhaps’ — Antoine’s voice was gentle — ‘just then he was
thinking that in some garret in the suburbs his wife and kids
were at that very moment sitting down to . . .’
235
SUMMER, 1914
Impulsively Anne’s fingers warm, emotional, closed on his.
‘Yes, yes, Tony darling!’ she broke in eagerly. ‘I see what
you mean. It’s awful to think of. Only — you wouldn’t like
Laddie to get ill, would you?’ She seemed genuinely perplexed.
‘Why are you laughing? Look here, Tony, we really must
give the poor fellow a tip — a special one for him. Quite a big
tip — with Laddie’s compliments.’
For some moments she was lost in thought.
‘Just fancy!’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘My brother, too,
started life as a waiter. At a little restaurant in the
suburbs.’
‘I didn’t know you had a brother,’ Antoine remarked. His
tone and expression seemed to imply: ‘Of course I really know
next to nothing about you !’
‘Oh, he’s far away ... if he’s still alive. He enlisted in a
colonial regiment and went to Indo-China. He must have
settled down over there; I’ve never had a line from him.’
Gradually she had lowered her tone, always most emotive
in its lowest range. ‘It’s absurd — I could so easily have helped
him.’ She fell silent again.
A pause fell on their conversation ; then Antoine returned
to the attack. ‘So you weren’t there when he died?’
‘Who do you mean?’ Her lashes fluttered; she could not
account for his persistance. Still it gave her a certain satis-
faction, feeling Antoine so absorbed in her past life.
Suddenly she burst out laughing — a quite unexpected, gay,
revealing laugh.
‘Just fancy, the silliest thing is that I was accused of some-
thing I hadn’t done, and most likely I’d never have had the
pluck to do — and no one ever suspected me of the “crime” I’d
really committed. I’ll tell you what it was. I didn’t feel at all
easy about Goupillot’s will. So, during those last two years
when he was in his dotage, I coolly transferred to myself a
goodish slice of his fortune, after extracting a power of attorney
from him, with the help of a Beauvais lawyer. Quite needlessly,
as it turned out. The will was entirely in my favour and only
left Huguette the share she was entitled to by law. But, after
those seven years of hell, I guessed I had the right to help
236
MONDAY, JULY 20
myself.’ She ceased laughing, and her voice grew tender. ‘And
you, Tony, are the first person whom I’ve ever told that to.’
She gave a little shiver.
‘Feeling cold?’ Antoine looked round for her cloak. It was
late and there was a slight chill in the night air.
‘No, I’m thirsty.’ She held her glass towards the ice-pail.
He filled the glass with champagne and she drank eagerly,
then lit another of her scented cigarettes and, rising, drew her
cloak round her shoulders. As she sat down she pulled her
chair nearer Antoine’s.
‘Listen !’ she said.
Moths were fluttering round the lanterns, there was a patter
of tiny wings upon the sunshades over the tables. The band
had ceased playing and behind most of the windows of the
hostelry the lights were out.
‘It’s nice here,’ she said, with a fond glance towards her
lover, ‘but I know somewhere where it would be even nicer!’
As he said nothing, taking his hand, she laid it palm upwards
on the tablecloth. He thought she was going to read its ‘lines.’
With a hasty ‘No!’ he tried to free his hand. He had no
patience with predictions of this sort; even the handsomest
seemed so tame beside the future he had mapped out for
himself.
‘How silly you are!’ she laughed, without releasing his wrist.
‘Look, this is what I want to do !’ Bending quickly forward, she
pressed her lips to his palm and kept them there for some
moments.
With the other hand he gently stroked the small bowed head,
inwardly contrasting the blind passion that was hers for him
with the strict measure of his love for her.
Just then, as if she had read his thoughts, Anne raised her
head a little.
‘I don’t expect you to love me as I love you,’ she said. ‘All
I ask is for you to let me love you.’
237
SUMMER, 1914
2
Tuesday^ July 21
JACQ,UES RETURNS TO GENEVA
Vanheede, who was intending to go out, was busy
making his morning cup of coffee on his oil-stove, when there
was a knock at the door. Jacques had come straight to him,
without calling in at his own room first.
‘What’s the latest at Geneva?’ he cheerfully enquired, as he
deposited his valise on the floor.
At the far end of the room the little albino screwed his
eyes up peering at his visitor, whom he had recognized by
his voice.
‘So you’re back already, Baulthy?’
He walked towards Jacques, his doll-like hands extended,
and, after a close inspection of his friend, remarked :
‘You’re looking fit.’
‘Yes,’ Jacques agreed. ‘I’m in good form to-day.’
And so it was, for, unexpectedly enough, his night in the
train had been not merely restful; it had been a liberation. He
had had the carriage to himself, had lain down and fallen
asleep almost at once, and, on wakening at Culoz, had felt
refreshed, zestful, indeed quite exceptionally happy, as if some
weight — he knew not what — had been taken off his mind. As
at the open window he drew deep breaths of the brisk morning
air and watched the early sunbeams sweeping the last shreds of
night-mist from the depths of the valleys, he had pored upon
himself, trying to analyse the secret joy that flooded all his
being. ‘At last,’ he thought, ‘we’ve something definite to aim
at ; the days of racking our brains with theories and points of
dogma are over. The time has come for direct action — war
against war.’
He had no illusions as to the gravity of the situation; the
moment was, he knew, supremely critical. But when he took
238
TUESDAY, JULY 21
Stock of the impressions he had gleaned at Paris, the strong
position taken up by the French socialists, the unanimity of
the leaders grouped round Jaur^s and heartened by his pug-
nacious optimism, the entente which seemed in the making
between the Socialist Party programme and that of the Trade
Unions — everything tended to confirm his faith in the in-
domitable efficacy of the Socialist International.
‘Sit down on the bed.’ Vanheede straightened out the
crumpled sheets. ‘You’ll have a cup of coffee with me, won’t
you, Baulthy?’ (He had never brought himself to call Jacques
by his Christian name.) ‘So all went well? Tell me about it.
How are they taking it over there?’
‘At Paris? Well, that depends on whom you mean. In the
general public no one knows, so no one worries. It’s appalling!
The papers talk of nothing but the Caillaux case, Poincare’s
triumphal reception in Russia and — the holidays 1 It’s believed
that the French Press has been given orders: public interest
is to be switched off the trouble in the Balkans so as not to
make things harder for the diplomats to straighten out. But
the Party’s feverishly active and, really, they seem to be getting
excellent results. The scheme for a general strike has been
definitely put in the forefront of their programme. It will be
the platform of the French delegates at the Vienna Congress.
Obviously the doubtful point is the line the social-democrats
intend to take; they’ve agreed in principle to consider the
proposal again. But one can’t be sure.’
‘Any news from Austria?’ Vanheede put down the tooth-
glass containing his coffee amongst the books strewn on the
bedside table.
‘Yes. Goodish news, if true. Yesterday night at the Humaniti
office they seemed sure the Austrian note to Servia would not
have an aggressive character.’
‘I say, Baulthy,’ Vanheede suddenly blurted out, ‘I’m so
glad you’re back, it does me good to see you.’ Smiling to
excuse his warmth, he went on at once. ‘Biihlmann’s been
here. He told us a story that comes from the Chancellery at
Vienna, a story which goes to prove, on the contrary, that
Austria has perfectly fiendish intentions, and it’s all been
239
SUMMER, 1914
planned out in advance. ... Yes, the whole world’s gone rotten !’
he added gloomily.
‘Tell me about it, old chap.’ In Jacques’ tone there was less
curiosity than cordiality and affection. Evidently Vanheede
noticed this, for, smiling, he came and sat beside Jacques on
the bed.
‘What he said was that the doctors called in to attend Francis
Joseph discovered that he was suffering from an incurable
disease of the throat. So acute that the old Emperor will die
before the year is out.’
‘In that case R.I.P. for Francis Joseph!’ For the moment
Jacques was not inclined to take a tragic view of things. He had
wound his handkerchief round the glass so as not to burn his
fingers and was sipping the syrupy mixture brewed by Van-
heede. Over the rim of the glass his eyes shot a friendly but
incredulous glance at the albino’s pale face and unruly shock
of hair.
‘Wait a bit!’ Vanheede said. ‘I’m coming to the interesting
part of it. The doctors’ diagnosis was transmitted at once to
the Chancellor. Berchtold, it seems, summoned forthwith to
his country house the various political leaders, for a secret con-
ference, a sort of Cabinet Council.’
‘Did he now!’ Jacques chuckled.
‘At that meeting, it seems, the gentlemen present — amongst
them Tisza, Forgach, and Hotzendorf, the Chief of Staff —
argued on the following lines. ... In the prevailing state of
home affairs, the Emperor’s death was bound to plunge the
country into a state of domestic chaos. Even if the Dual Mon-
archy weathered the storm, Austria would be hamstrung for
some time to come. She would have to postpone indefinitely
the reduction of Servia, and to ensure the future of the Empire
the reduction of Servia was indispensable. What was to be
done?’
Jacques had been listening with growing attention. ‘Why,
launch the attack on Servia at an early date, before the old
man’s death — I suppose?’
‘Exactly. But some go further still. . . . ’
As Jacques watched Vanheede talking he was struck once
240
TUESDAY, JULY 2 1
again by the contrast between the fragile form, the young
seraphic face, like a blind angel’s, and the stubborn force, the
hard core of resolve behind that seeming blandness. ‘A strange
little fellow!’ he smiled to himself. He remembered occasions
when, on Sundays, at one or another of the little inns beside
the lake, he and his friends had engaged in heated political
discussions and suddenly Vanheede had j’umped up muttering,
‘Everything’s foul, the world is rotten !’ run off into the garden
like a child, hopped on to the swing and started swinging.
‘Some go further still,’ Vanheede went on in his high-pitched
voice. ‘They say that the Sarajevo crime was arranged for by
agents provocateurs in Berchtold’s pay, to create the necessary
pretext. Thereby, according to them, Berchtold killed two
birds with one stone; he got out of the way an inconvenient,
too peace-loving heir to the throne, and at the same time made
it possible to start a war on Servia before the Emperor’s death.’
Jacques laughed. ‘That’s a good blood-and-thunder yarn
you’re telling!’
‘Don’t you believe it, Baulthy?’
‘Well,’ Jacques replied in a serious tone, ‘I’m quite ready
to believe that an ambitious man whose nature has been
warped by a political career will stick at nothing, absolutely
nothing, once he feels that he has all the power in his hands.
History is one long record of such men’s deeds. But I believe
in something else, old chap — that the most Machiavellian
schemes will “gang agley” when they come up against the will-
to-peace of the masses.’
‘Do you think the Pilot shares your view?’ Vanheede asked,
shaking his head dubiously.
Jacques cast him a questioning look.
‘I don’t mean to say,’ the little Belgian went on rather
uncomfortably, ‘that the Pilot says the opposite. Oh no! But
one always gets an impression that he doesn’t really believe
the masses will make a determined stand, are really bent
on peace.’
A shadow fell on Jacques’ face. He knew well how Mey-
nestrel’s views differed from his own; but the thought was a
distasteful one, and instinctively he brushed it aside.
241
SUMMER, 1914
‘I assure you, Vanheede, that the desire for peace I spoke
of is a very real thing,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’ve just come
back from Paris and I’m full of confidence. At the present
moment, not only in France but throughout Europe there
aren’t ten per cent — no, not even five per cent — of the men
who might be called up for service who’d approve of being
drawn into a war.’
‘But the remaining ninety-five, Baulthy — aren’t they just
meek, sheep-like creatures who . . . ?’
‘Certainly. But suppose that amongst those ninety-five there
are a dozen, even half a dozen, who realize the danger and
refuse to be coerced? They’d constitute a whole army of
recalcitrants for the various governments to reckon with. It’s
those six men in every hundred whom we must organize. It’s
perfectly feasible. In fact it’s just what all the revolutionaries
in Europe are working for at present.’
He rose from the bed.
‘What’s the time?’ he asked, glancing at his wrist. ‘I must
go and see Meynestrel now.’
‘Not this morning,’ Vanheede said. ‘He’s gone to Lausanne
with Richardley, in a car.’
‘Damn ! . . . Quite sure?’
‘He had an appointment there at nine, about the Congress.
They won’t be back till noon.’. •
‘All right. I’ll wait till then.’ Jacques looked annoyed. ‘What
are you doing this morning?’
‘I’d meant to go to the Library, but . . .’
‘Come with me to Saffrio’s place; we’ll talk on the way. I’ve
a letter to deliver to him. I met Negretto in Paris.’ He picked
up his valise and walked to the door. ‘Got to have a shave.
Call for me in ten minutes, on your way down.’
Saffrio lived in a small two-storey house in the Rue de la
Pelisserie near the Cathedral; the entire ground floor was
occupied by his shop.
Little was known of Saflfrio’s past. His good humour and
well-known readiness to oblige had won him general regard.
He had been a registered member of the Italian Socialist Party
before coming to Switzerland and had kept a drug-store at
242
TUESDAY, JULY 2 1
Geneva for seven years. He had left Italy as a result of ‘trouble
with his wife,’ of which he often spoke but always in the
vaguest terms, and which had brought him, some alleged, to
the point of murder.
The shop was empty when Jacques and Vanheede entered.
As the doorbell chimed SafFrio appeared at the back entrance ;
his handsome southern eyes lit up on seeing them.
‘‘Buon giornoP
Beaming, he wagged his head, gestured with his arms, rolled
his lop-sided shoulders, with the airs and graces of an Italian
innkeeper welcoming a customer.
‘I’ve two of my countrymen down there,’ he breathed in
Jacques’ ear. ‘Come!’
He was always prepared to shelter Italian refugees against
whom the Swiss Government had passed deportation orders.
As a general rule the Geneva police were easy-going enough,
but now and again a wave of zeal came over them, as inoppor-
tune as it was brief, involving the expulsion from Swiss territory
of all foreign revolutionaries whose ‘papers’ were not in order.
The cleaning-up process lasted a week or so, during which its
victims usually did no more than quit their lodgings and lie
low in some friend’s home till the danger had blown over and
the sky was clear again. SafFrio specialized in this form of
hospitality.
Jacques and Vanheede followed him across the shop.
I’he door at the back of it opened into a narrow kitchen
behind which lay a larger room formerly used as a larder. It
had a close resemblance to a dungeon ; the roof was vaulted,
high in the wall a small barred window giving on an empty
courtyard let in a feeble light. But it was admirably fitted for
a hiding-place, and as it could accommodate a fair number of
people, Meynestrel sometimes used it for small private meetings.
One wall was taken up by shelves piled up with utensils dis-
carded from the shop: unserviceable mortars, bottles, empty
jars. A framed portrait of Karl Marx lorded it on the top shelf;
the glass was cracked and grey with dust.
Two Italians were in this cell-like room. One, a quite young
man in tattered garments, was sitting at a table. Before him was
243
SUMMER, 1914
a dish of cold macaroni and tomatoes which he was scooping
up with the point of a knife on to a slice of bread. He looked
up at the intruders, then continued eating; his eyes had the
gentle sadness of a wounded animal’s.
The other man, older and better dressed, was standing,
holding a sheaf of documents. He came forward to greet the
visitors. Jacques had met him already at Berlin; he was an
Italian pressman named Remo Tutti. There was something
rather effeminate about the little man, but his eyes were keen,
sparkling with intelligence.
Saffrio pointed to Tutti.
‘Remo got here from Livorno yesterday.’
‘I’ve just come from Paris,’ Jacques said to Saffrio, taking
a letter from his pocket-book. ‘Guess whom I ran across there
and who gave me this letter !’
The Italian snatched at the letter with a cry ofjoy. ‘Negretto !’
Jacques sat down, turning to Tutti.
‘Negretto tells me that under colour of army manoeuvres
80,000 reservists have been called up and equipped during
the last fortnight. Is that so?’
‘Not more than 55 or 60,000 anyhow. Si. But what Negretto
may not know is that there’s been serious trouble in the army.
Especially in the northern garrisons. Any number of mutinies !
The General Staff can’t cope with the situation. They’ve
practically had to give up court-martialling the men.’
Vanheede’s piping voice rose in the silence.
‘You see! Disobedience is enough. No violence. And then
we’ll have an end of bloodshed on the earth.’
Everyone — except Vanheede — smiled. Blushing, the little
albino locked his hands and said no more.
‘You think then,’ Jacques said, ‘that, in the event of general
mobilization, there’d be trouble?’
‘Not the faintest doubt,’ Tutti replied emphatically.
Saffrio’s nose bobbed up from the letter he was reading.
‘In my country when the militarists try their little games,
everybody — socialist or not — joins up against them.’
‘We,’ Tutti explained, ‘have an advantage over you; we
have experience. The Tripoli campaign is still fresh in our
244
TUESDAY, JULY 2 1
memories. Our people have been through- the mill ; they know
what it can cost, letting the Army take control. I’m not thinking
only of the sufferings of the poor chaps at the front, but of the
rot that immediately attacks the country’s life : the suppression
of all freedom, jingo propaganda, the cost of living soaring
up, the plague oi profittori. Italy’s gone through all that already.
And she’s forgotten nothing. Yes, in our country, if we’re
faced with mobilization, it’ll be child’s play for the Party to
fix up another “Red Week”.’
Carefully folding up the letter, Saffrio tucked it into his
shirt and turned towards Jacques. In the comely, bronzed face
the dark eyes were radiant.
'Grazier he said.
The youngster at the far end of the room had risen. Lifting
with both hands from the table a tall jug of porous earthenware,
he tilted it above his lips and took a long draught of the ice-
cold water.
'BastaP Saffrio grinned, as the young man went on drinking,
and, going up to him, playfully tweaked the nape of his neck.
‘Now, comrade. I’ll take you upstairs. You must have a nap.’
The young Italian followed him obediently into the kitchen,
giving the others a graceful nod as he went by.
On the threshold Saffrio looked round and said to Jacques :
‘You may be sure our Mussolini’s warnings in the Avanti
haven’t fallen on deaf ears. The King and his ministers know
now that the people won’t follow them if they try to rush the
country into a war.’
Their footsteps rang, receding, up the little wooden stair-
case that led to the top floor.
Jacques was in a brown study. He pushed back his hair and
turned to Tutti.
‘That’s what has got to be brought to the notice of — I won’t
say the leaders, who know more than even we about it — to the
notice of those nationalist groups in Germany and Austria which
are still counting on the Triple Alliance and urging their
governments to take violent measures. . . . Have you still your
job at Berlin?’
‘No,’ Tutti replied briefly. His tone, the cryptic smile that
245
SUMMER, 1914
crossed his face, implied quite clearly : ‘No use asking questions.
My job is — nobody’s business!’
Just then Saflfrio came back, chuckling to himself.
‘Those youngsters — bless them!’ he confided to Vanheede.
‘They’ll swallow anything ! That young ass got nicely caught
by an agent provocateur yesterday. Luckily the boy is a good
sprinter — and knew old Daddy Saffrio’s address.’ He turned
cheerfully to Jacques. ‘Well, Thibault, so your trip to Paris
gave you the impression that all is going well?’
Jacques’ face lit up. ‘Better than well!’ he cried en-
thusiastically.
Vanheede moved to another chair and sat down beside
Jacques, with his back to the light. He suffered like a night-bird
when he had the light in his eyes.
‘I didn’t meet only Frenchmen,’ Jacques continued. ‘I spoke
to Belgians, Russians, and Germans as well. All over Europe
the revolutionaries are on the qui vive. They’ve realized the
gravity of the crisis. Everywhere they’re getting together,
arranging a concerted plan of action. Yes, the anti-war cam-
paign is definitely taking form and it’s most comforting to see
how — in under a week — the movement has extended, how
unanimous they all are. It shows what forces the Socialist
International can set in movement when it chooses. And what’s
been happening lately on a small scale, by driblets, in the
various capitals, is nothing beside what’s contemplated. The
International Council is to meet at Brussels next week, you
know. ...”
‘Si, sir exclaimed in one breath Tutti and Saflfrio, fired by
Jacques’ enthusiasm, their eyes fixed eagerly on his face.
The albino, too, bent forward and peered up blinkingly at
Jacques, who was seated beside him. He had slipped an arm
along the back of Jacques’ chair and his hand rested on his
friend’s shoulder — so lightly that Jacques did not feel it.
‘Jaur^s and his group,’ Jacques went on, ‘attach the greatest
importance to that meeting. Twenty-two countries are sending
delegates. And these delegates represent not only the twelve
million socialist workers, but millions of others who are in
sympathy with them — all those who are in two minds about
246
TUESDAY, JULY 21
socialism, and even some who’re in our enemies’ camp but
realize that when a war is threatening, only the Socialist Inter-
national can embody, and give effect to, the masses’ desire for
peace. Yes, the Brussels week will make history. For the first
time on record the voice of the people, of the true maj’ority,
will be able to make itself heard. And obeyed!’
Saffrio was fidgeting with excitement. ‘Bravo!’ he shouted.
‘Bravo !’
‘And we must look still further ahead.’ Jacques yielded to
the pleasure of strengthening his confidence by voicing it aloud.
‘If we win through, it will not be only a great battle won against
war. It’ll be more than that. A victory which may give social-
ism ’Just then Jacques grew conscious that Vanheede’s little
hand was resting on his shoulder; it had begun trembling all
at once. Turning he patted his friend’s knee. ‘Yes, Vanheede,
old chap, what’s on foot just now may well mean nothing more
or less that the world-wide triumph of socialism — and without
any recourse to violence.’ He jumped up from his chair. ‘Now
let’s go and see if the Pilot’s back.’
It was still a little too early to reckon on finding Meynestrel
at home.
‘Come and sit down a bit at the cafe over there,’ Jacques
suggested, slipping his arm through Vanheede’s.
The albino shook his head. He had wasted quite enough time
already.
Since, following Jacques, he had settled at Geneva he had
given up working as a typist and specialized in historical
research. The work was not so well paid, but he was his own
master. For two months he had been ruining his eyesight,
collating material for a book entitled Protestant Records that a
Leipzig publisher was bringing out.
Jacques accompanied him to the Public Library. Then, as
he happened to be passing the Cafe Landolt — which with the
‘GrQtli’ shared the patronage of the younger generation of
socialists — and was feeling lonely, he turned in.
To his surprise Paterson was there. The Englishman, in white
flannel trousers, was busy hanging pictures for an exhibition
that the proprietor had authorized him to give on the premises.
247
SUMMER, 1914
Paterson seemed in high spirits. He had just turned down
a magnificent proposition. An American by the name of Saxton
Clegg, impressed by Paterson’s still-lifes, had offered him fifty
dollars for a life-size portrait of the late Mrs. Clegg, who had
perished in the Mont Pelee catastrophe. The portrait was to
be copied from a faded photograph, of the size of a visiting-
card. The disconsolate widower had insisted on one point only :
that Mrs. Clegg’s costume should be transformed so as to come
in line with the latest Paris fashions. Paterson spiced the story
with a fine flow of humour.
‘Pat,’ Jacques thought, hearing the young Englishman’s peals
of laughter, ‘is the only one of us capable of any real gaiety :
genuine, spontaneous high spirits.’
‘I’ll come along with you, old boy, for a bit of the way,’
Paterson said, on learning Jacques was going to see Meynestrel.
‘I’ve been getting some rather funny letters from England these
last few days. Thay say in London that Haldane is fixing up,
on the q.t., a slap-up expeditionary force. He means to be ready
for anything. And the fleet’s still mobilized. By the way, have
you read the papers — about the Spithead review? Military and
naval attaches, it seems, from all over Europe, have been for-
mally invited to watch, for six solid hours, the British fleet steam
past, in single file and in the closest possible formation — like
those processions of caterpillars one sees here in the spring,
don’t you know! It’ll be a damned fine show, I expect.
Just window-dressing, of course,’ he added with a derisive
gesture.
There was a hint of pride in Paterson’s voice, behind the
sarcasm, and Jacques noted it with inward amusement. ‘An
Englishman,’ he thought, ‘however socialistic, can never help
being thrilled by a fine naval pageant.’
‘By the way, what about our portrait?’ Paterson asked as
he was saying good-bye. ‘There seems to be a hoodoo on it,
doesn’t there? Two sittings are all I need — honour bright I Two
mornings. But when?’
Jacques knew the Englishman’s obstinacy. Better give in,
he thought, and get it over.
‘Will to-morrow do? At eleven?’
248
TUESDAY, JULY 21
‘Right-oh. You’re a damned good pal, Jacques. Thank
you. . . .’
Alfreda was by herself. In her big-flowered kimono, with
her lacquer-black fringe and eyelashes, her likeness to ajapanese
doll was too pronounced not to be intentional. Flies were
buzzing in the sunbeams filtering through the Venetian blind.
The sickly smell of a cauliflower boiling in the kitchen pervaded
the little flat.
She seemed delighted at seeing Jacques again.
‘Yes, the Pilot’s back. But he’s just sent a message to me by
Monier that some news has come in and he’s conferring with
Richardley at Headquarters. I’m to join him there, with my
typewriter. I say, won’t you have lunch with me?’ Her
look had suddenly grown earnest. ‘Then we might go along
together.’
Her dark, exotic eyes were fixed on him, and he had a fleeting
impression that it was not out of pure friendliness she had
chanced the invitation. Was it to have an opportunity for
questioning, or confiding in, him? Anyhow, the prospect of
a tSte-d-tSte lunch with Alfreda did not appeal to him, and he
wished to see Meynestrel as soon as possible.
He declined.
The Pilot was at work in his little office at the ‘Talking Shop.’
Only Richardley was with him. Richardley was seated,
Meynestrel standing behind him, and both were bending over
documents spread out on the table.
When he saw Jacques coming in a gleam of friendly surprise
flickered in Meynestrel’s eyes. Then his sharp gaze steadied —
an idea had just crossed his mind — and stooping down, he cast
a questioning glance at Richardley, indicating Jacques with
a jerk of his chin.
‘As he’s back, why not give him the job?’
‘Certainly,’ Richardley agreed.
‘Sit down,’ Meynestrel said to Jacques. ‘We’ve almost done.’
Then he turned to Richardley. ‘Get this down, please. It’s for
the Swiss group.’
In his harsh, toneless voice he began dictating.
‘Your question is misplaced. That is not the issue. In their
249
SUMMER, 1914
Meynestrel, his hands behind his back, was pacing to and
fro in the little room, to restore the circulation in his injured
leg. His face was anxious. Suddenly he turned to Jacques.
‘Tell me — in Paris they had a blind conviction Austria would
act with moderation, hadn’t they?’
‘Yes. At the Humanite yesterday it was said that the Austrian
note doesn’t even contemplate any delay ’
‘That remains to be seen.’ Meynestrel had turned from the
window, whence he had been gazing down into the courtyard,
and was walking towards Jacques.
‘Yes?’ Jacques murmured. A faint shudder ran down his
spine, and a light film of sweat formed on his forehead.
‘Hosmer knew what he was talking about,’ Richardley
observed in a cold, detached voice. ‘Events are moving fast.’
There was a short silence. The Pilot had started pacing up
and down again. His nerves were unmistakably on edge. Jacques
wondered if his anxiety concerned Austria — or Alfreda’s
absence.
‘Vaillant and Jaures are right,’ he said. ‘The governments
must be made to realize there’s no chance of getting the masses
to accept any policy involving war. They must be forced to
submit to arbitration. By the threat of a general strike. As you
know, the motion was voted a week ago at the French Con-
gress, with a big majority. In any case, everyone’s agreed to
it on principle. At Paris they’re busy trying to find a way of
convincing the Germans and getting them to declare themselves
as explicitly as we have done.’
Richardley shook his head.
‘Waste of time. They’ll never consent. And their argument
— it’s the time-worn argument of Plekhanoff and Liebknecht —
is a sound one: as between two unequally socialized nations,
the more socialized is at the mercy of the less socialized one.
That’s self-evident.’
‘The Germans are hypnotized by the Russian peril.’
‘Naturally enough. It will be another story when Russia has
evolved, socially speaking, to such a point that it’s possible
to launch a strike in both countries simultaneously.’
Jacques refused to give in.
252
TUESDAY, JULY 21
‘For one thing, we can no longer be so sure that strikes must
be ruled out in Russia — anyhow partial strikes like that at the
Putiloff factory, which, if extended to other industrial centres,
may very well give a lot of trouble to the military faction. But
let’s leave Russia out. There’s a definite argument with which
we can counter the prejudice of the social-democrats against
a strike in Germany. We can say: “An order for a general
strike to be declared automatically on the day of mobilization
would be a danger for Germany— that’s granted. But what
about a preventive strike? A strike launched by the Socialist
Party during the preliminary phase of international tension,
while the diplomatists are bandying notes — long before there’s
any question of mobilization? The mere threat of such a setback
to the nation’s striking-power — provided it was patently in
earnest — would be enough to force your government to consent
to arbitration.” None of the German objections could stand
up against that argument. And that, I understand, is the plat-
form which the French Party proposes to adopt at the Brussels
Congress.’
Standing at the table, his head bent over the documents that
strewed it, Meynestrel had seemed completely unmindful of
their discussion. Now, straightening up, he came and planted
himself between Jacques and Richardley. A faintly ironic
smile glimmered on his face.
‘Now, children, off with you! I’ve work to do. We’ll talk
later. Come back, both of you, at four.’ He cast an almost
frightened glance towards the window. ‘I can’t understand why
Freda . . .’ he began, then turned to Richardley. ‘Firstly, give
Jacques precise instructions for his meeting with Kniabrovski.
Secondly, fix up money matters with him; he may be away
for two or three weeks.’
As he spoke he shepherded them towards the door, which
he closed behind them.
253
SUMMER, 1914
3
Wednesday, July 22
JACQUES IS SENT TO ANTWERP ON A SPECIAL MISSION
Under the blazing sunlight of that summer afternoon
Antwerp sweltered like a city of the South.
Blinking with the glare, Jacques looked up at the station
clock. Ten past three. The Amsterdam train was not due
in till three twenty- three. It would be wiser to let himself be
seen as little as possible within the station premises.
As he crossed the thoroughfare he cast a quick glance over
the people sitting on the terrace of a cafe opposite. Evidently
his survey reassured him, for, noticing an empty table in a
corner, he sat down at it and ordered beer. The square in front
was almost empty, despite the hour. All the passers-by kept to
the pavement on the shady side, making the same ditour, like a
procession of ants. Tram-cars coming from all parts of the town,
trailing beneath them slabs of shadow, criss-crossed in the
centre of the square, their over-heated wheels groaning on the
curves.
At three-twenty Jacques made a move, turning leftwards so
as to enter the station from the side. There were few people
about. A decrepit Belgian porter, wearing a kipi, was describ-
ing figures-of-eight with a watering-can on the dusty flagstones.
Reading his paper, Jacques took his stand at the foot of the
steps marked Way Out, leading from the platforms ; passengers
were beginning to come down. Without fixing his eyes on
anyone in particular, with feigned indifference he watched
them flocking down the stairs. A man in the fifties, wearing
a cap, went by. He was dressed in a grey suit, a sheaf of
newspapers was tucked under his arm. The crowd thinned
rapidly out; soon only a few laggards remained, some old
women laboriously descending the steps.
Then, as though the person he had been expecting had failed
254
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22
to show up, Jacques turned and walked quietly away from the
station. Only a skilled detective, on the look out for it, would
have noticed the quick glance he cast over his shoulder before
stepping off the pavement.
He walked along the avenue up to a wide crossing, at which
he hesitated, like a tourist taking his bearings. Then swerving
to the right, he walked past the Lyric Theatre, pausing a
moment to scan the play-bills, and turned unhurrying into
one of the little public gardens in front of the Law Courts.
Noticing an empty bench, he sank on to it, mopping his brow.
On the path in front some children, untroubled by the heat,
were playing ball. Jacques took a sheaf of folded newspapers
from his pocket and laid it beside him on the bench. He lit
a cigarette. The ball rolled to his feet; laughing, he picked
it up and made as if to pocket it. The children gathered
round him, shrilly protesting. He threw the ball and joined
in their game.
After some minutes another loiterer came and seated himself
at the other end of the bench. He was carrying a bundle of
untidily folded newspapers. The man had a foreign look ; Slav,
most likely. The peak of his cap was pulled well down and hid
his forehead ; the prominent cheek-bones showed as high-lights
in its shadow. The beardless face was that of an elderly man —
gnarled and ravaged but vividly alert. His skin, weathered a
rich pie-crust hue, effectively set off his eyes, which, though
it was hard to fix their colour in the shadow of the cap, were
a pale, intensely luminous blue-grey.
The man took a small cigar from his pocket and, turning to
Jacques, politely touched his cap-peak. To light his cigar at
Jacques’ cigarette, he leaned forward, resting the hand that
held the newspapers on the bench. Their eyes met. The man
straightened up and placed the bundle of newspapers on his
knees. Adroitly he had taken his neighbour’s papers and left
his own on the bench beside Jacques, who casually but promptly
laid his hand upon them.
His eyes fixed on the middle distance, without a flutter of
his lips, in a barely audible voice — that brittle, ventriloquial
voice the knack of which is learnt in prisons — the man said :
255
SUMMER, 1914
‘The letter’s hidden in the papers. And there’s some of the
latest issues of the Pravda.'
Jacques gave no sign of having heard, but went on playing
with the children as if nothing had happened. He threw the
ball, the children rushed away, there was a general scuffle to
get hold of it, the winner brought it back triumphantly, and
then the game started anew.
The elderly man was laughing; he too seemed to find
pleasure in the children’s antics. Very soon it was to him they
handed the ball, as he could throw it further than Jacques.
Once the two men were alone Kniabrovski seized the oppor-
tunity and began speaking, his teeth still clenched, in little
jerky phrases, that he poured out excitedly in a hissing under-
tone.
‘At Petersburg on Monday, a hundred and forty thousand
strikers. A hundred and forty thousand. Martial law in certain
quarters of the city. Telephone wires cut, no trams running.
Mounted police charges. Four whole regiments with machine-
guns called up. Cossack regiments, detachments from . . .’
The children rushed up in a bunch, gathered round the seat.
He drowned the last words in a fit of coughing.
‘But the police, the army are helpless,’ he went on, after
launching the ball into the middle of a lawn. ‘One riot after
another! The Government had handed out French flags, for
Poincare’s visit; the women changed them into red flags.
Cavalry charges, volleys. I saw a pitched battle in the Viborg
quarter. Terrible it was I Another one near the Warsaw Station.
Another in the Stagara-Derevnia suburb. Another in the middle
of the night, a . . .’
He paused again; the children were back. And suddenly in
a burst of hungry affection he caught hold of the youngest —
a pale fair-haired boy of four or five — drew him on to his knee,
laughing, and gave him a loud kiss on the mouth. Then he
put down the startled child, took the ball and threw it.
‘The strikers aren’t armed. They’ve only paving-stones,
bottles, kerosine-oil tins. To hold up the charges they fire
houses. I saw the Semsonievsky Bridge burnt down. There were
fires everywhere, all night. Hundreds killed. Hundreds and
256
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22
hundreds of arrests. All the suspects roped in. Our newspapers
have been forbidden since Sunday. Our editors are in jail. The
revolution’s begun. High time it was; but for the revolutions
there’d be war. That Poincare of yours, he’s done a lot of harm
in our country, a damned lot of harm.’
Looking towards the lawn where the children were scuffling
for the ball, he twisted his lips in an expression meant for a
laugh, that was an ugly snarl.
‘Now,’ he said gloomily, ‘I’m off.’
‘Right!’ Jacques breathed. Though there was no one near,
it was useless to prolong the interview. Nervously he whispered :
‘Going back— there?’
Kniabrovski did not reply at once. His elbows propped on
his knees, he was bending forward, staring at the gravel between
his feet. His body seemed to have suddenly gone limp, crumpled
up. Jacques noticed the lines of resignation — truer to say, of
patience — that long, hard years had graven on each side of
his mouth.
‘Yes, I’m going back.’ He raised his head and his eyes roamed
the scene before them — the garden, distant houses, and blue
sky — without settling anywhere; they had the haunted, ob-
durate look of a man who will stick at nothing this side of
madness . . . and beyond. ‘By the sea route. Hamburg. I’ll
have no trouble going back. But over there, you know, things
are getting difficult. . . .’
He rose slowly from the seat.
‘Very difficult indeed.’
At last he turned towards Jacques and touched his cap
politely, like a chance-met stranger taking leave. Their eyes
exchanged a look of anguish, of fraternity.
''Vdobryi tchassT he whispered, ‘Good luck!’ before moving
away.
The laughing, romping children escorted him as far as the
gate. Jacques followed him with his eyes. When the Russian
was out of sight, he thrust the sheaf of newspapers left lying
on the bench into his pocket. Then, rising, he resumed his
stroll.
That night, after sewing the letter given by Kniabrovski
257 K
SUMMER, 1914
into the lining of his coat, he took the train from Brussels
to Paris.
Next day, Thursday, at a very early hour, he handed over
the secret missive to Chevanon who was due to reach Geneva
that night.
4
Thursday^ July 2^
PARIS, AGAIN
O N the following day, Thursday the 23rd, Jacques dropped
in early in the morning at the Cafe du Progrh to read the papers.
He seated himself at a table on the ground floor, wishing to
keep clear of the ‘Talking Shop’ upstairs.
The account of the trial of Madame Caillaux filled up the
whole front page of every one of the dailies.
On the second or third page a few of them somewhat reluc-
tantly inserted a short statement to the effect that strikes had
broken out at some works in St. Petersburg, but that this labour
unrest had promptly been quelled by strong police measures.
As against this there were entire columns devoted to the fes-
tivities ordained by the Czar in honour of M. Poincare.
As for the Austro-Servian dispute, the papers were discreetly
reticent. A note — oflicially inspired, no doubt — worded in each
case in practically the same terms, stated definitely that in
Russian Government circles it was generally held that an easing
of the strain was bound to ensue very shortly as the result of
the action being taken through the usual diplomatic channels,
while most of the writers politely expressed their trust in Ger-
many, a country which had never failed throughout the Balkan
crisis to preach moderation to her Austrian ally.
258
THURSDAY, JULY 2$
The Action Frangaise alone openly voiced its uneasiness. It
made the most of the opportunity thus offered for incriminating
more violently than ever the innate weakness of the Republican
Government in the matter of foreign policy, and of holding
up to scorn the unpatriotic behaviour of the parties of the
Left. The socialists came in for special abuse. No longer satis-
fied with repeating as he had done every day for many years
that Jaures was a traitor in the pay of Germany, Charles
Maurras, revolted by the emotional appeals to international
pacifism published in ever-increasing numbers by the Humaniti,
now appeared to single out Jaures as a fitting obj'ect for the
dagger of some avenging spirit of the Charlotte Corday type.
‘We would incite no man to political murder,’ he wrote with
a boldness tempered by caution, ‘but let M. Jaures quake in
his shoes ! His leading article may very well inspire some un-
balanced zealot with the desire of putting to the test whether
it is a fact that nothing would be altered in the immutable
order of things were M. Jean Jaures to meet with the same
end as M. Calmette.’
Cadieux rushed by on his way to the street.
‘Aren’t you going upstairs?’ he asked. ‘They’re at it hammer
and tongs up there. It’s quite thrilling. There’s an Austrian
delegate. Comrade Boehm, who’s j’ust turned up from Vienna.
He says the Austrian Note is to be handed in at Belgrade this
evening, the moment Poincare leaves St. Petersburg.’
‘D’you mean to say Boehm’s in Paris?’ Jacques exclaimed,
jumping up from his seat, overjoyed at the prospect of having
another talk with the Austrian.
He ran up the little spiral staircase, pushed open the door
and presently caught sight of Boehm with a mug of beer in
front of him, his yellow waterproof neatly folded on his knees.
Some fifteen militants were crowding round him, plying him
with questions. Boehm was answering each in turn, chewing
the stump of his everlasting cigar.
He greeted Jacques with a friendly nod, as though he had
only just taken leave of him the day before.
The news he brought with him as to the war-fever prevailing
in Vienna and the general pugnacity of Austro-Hungarian
259
SUMMER, 1914
public opinion seemed to have aroused general indignation and
anxiety. An aggressive ultimatum from Austria to Servia, should
it materialize, seemed likely in the present circumstances to
have all the more serious consequences in that a warning Note
had been circulated by the Servian Prime Minister to every
Chancellery in Europe advising the Powers not to count too
much on Servia remaining passive, and stating that she was
now determined to reject any demand derogatory to her
dignity.
Without in any way attempting to justify the irresponsible
policy of his country, Boehm did his best to account for the
resentment felt in Austria towards Servia, and incidentally
towards Russia, as a result of the continual pin-pricks her
truculent little neighbour, supported and egged on by the
Russian giant, kept inflicting on the Austrian national pride.
‘Hosmer,’ he declared, ‘read me a confidential diplomatic
Note sent several years ago by Sazonov, the Foreign Minister
at St. Petersburg, to the Russian Ambassador to Servia.
Sazonov expressly refers to the fact that a certain slice of
Austrian territory has been promised to the Servians by Russia.
A highly important document,’ he added, ‘for it’s a proof that
Servia — and her evil genius, Russia — are a constant menace
to the security of Oesterreich.’
‘So it’s the same story! The capitalists are on their usual
political racket,’ an old workman in blue overalls shouted from
the far end of the table. ‘Every Government in Europe, whether
it calls itself democratic or not, with its underhand diplomacy
in which the people have no say, is just a tool in the hands of
those international money-grubbers ! And if Europe’s been
spared a general war during the last forty years, it’s only
because it suits the financiers’ book to keep up a state of armed
peace, in which the nations are getting deeper and deeper into
debt. But the moment it pays the big banks for a war to break
out — well, you seel’
They all assented vociferously. Little did they care that the
interruption had but the remotest bearing on the subject Boehm
w^s expounding.
A young fellow whom Jacques knew by sight, and whose
260
THURSDAY, JULY 23
watchful, fever-bright eyes and consumptive features had caught
his attention, suddenly emerged from his silence and began
quoting in a hollow voice a dictum by Jaurfes on the perils
of secret diplomacy.
Taking advantage of the ensuing uproar, Jacques went up
to Boehm and made an appointment for them to have lunch
together. After which he slipped away, leaving the Austrian
to pursue his exposition with the same patient obstinacy he
gave to chewing his cigar.
His lunch with Boehm, several talks at the head office of
the Humanite, a few urgent messages Richardley had asked him
to deliver personally on reaching Paris, then, in the evening,
a socialist gathering at Levallois in honour of Boehm (at which,
in a short speech, he gave an account of what he knew of the
riots in St. Petersburg) so thoroughly engrossed Jacques’ mind
during that first day that he had little occasion to think about
the Fontanins. Two or three times, however, the idea did occur
to him of ringing up the Nursing Home in the Boulevard
Bineau, and enquiring whether Jerome was still alive. But
would they have given him the desired information without
asking him in the first place who he was? Better not make the
attempt. He had rather not call attention to the fact that he
was in Paris. The last thing at night, however, when he was
back in his little room in the Quai de la Tournelle, he had
to admit, before falling asleep, that, far from feeling his mind
at rest, his self-imposed ignorance worried him even more than
any definite tidings could have done.
And as he woke up, on the Friday morning, he was half
tempted to ring up Antoine. ‘But what’s the use? It’s no concern
of mine,’ he said to himself, looking at his watch. ‘Seven twenty !
If I’m to get in touch with him before he’s off to the hospital.
I’ve only just time as it is !’ And without more ado, he jumped
out of bed.
Antoine was greatly surprised at hearing his brother’s voice.
He told Jacques that M. de Fontanin’s death had taken place
that very night, after he had lingered on for three days without
recovering consciousness. ‘The funeral takes place on Saturday
— to-morrow. Shall you still be in Paris then? Daniel,’ he went
261
SUMMER, 1914
on, ‘never stirs from the Nursing Home; you’re sure to find
him there at any time.’ Antoine seemed quite certain of his
brother’s wish to meet Daniel again.
‘Come and have lunch with me,’ he suggested.
Jacques turned away from the ’phone with an impatient
shrug and hung up the receiver.
On the 24th, the papers briefly reported the handing in of
an Austrian Note to Servia. Most of them, indeed, abstained
— no doubt by order — from offering any comment whatsoever.
Jaur^s had chosen the Russian strikes as the subject of his
leading article. He wrote in a markedly serious vain.
‘What a warning for the European Powers!’ he began.
‘Revolution brewing on every hand. Rash indeed would be
the Czar, were he to start a European War or permit one to
be started. Nor would the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy be
one whit less foolhardy, were it persuaded by the blind passions
of its clerical and military supporters into making an irre-
mediable breach with Servia. An ominous chapter has been
added to the tale of M. Poincare’s visit by the shedding of the
Russian workmen’s blood, and the tragic warning it affords.’
The staff of the Humanite were in no doubt as to the tone
of the Note; it certainly was of a peremptory character and
the worst was to be feared. Their nerves were all on edge as
they waited for Jaures to return. The ‘Skipper’ had suddenly
decided that morning to call at the Quai d’Orsay in person
and see M. Bienvenu-Martin, acting Foreign Minister during
the absence of M. Viviani.
There was a certain amount of confusion among the sub-
editors. They anxiously wondered how the European nations
would react. A pessimist by nature, Gallot maintained that
the news received that evening from Germany and Italy justified
the fear that in both these countries the man in the street, the
Press, and even certain members of the parties of the Left rather
approved than otherwise the step that Austria had taken.
Stefany agreed with Jaures that in Berlin the indignation of
the Social-Democrat parties would find expression in action
of a forcible nature and calculated to have far-reaching effects
not only in Germany but beyond the German borders.
262
THURSDAY, JULY 23
At noon the offices became empty. It was Stefany’s turn to
be on duty during the luncheon hour and Jacques offered to
keep him company so as to have a chance of studying the file
relating to the meeting of the International Committee to be
held the following week at Brussels, All nursed high hopes in
connection with this extraordinary meeting, Stefany knew for
a fact that Vaillant, Keir Hardie, and several other Party leaders
intended to include in their programme the proposal for a
general strike in case of war. How would this drastic measure
strike the socialists of other countries, particularly English and
German socialists?
At one o’clock Jaures had not yet turned up, and Jacques
went down to have a drink at the Cafe du Croissant where he
thought the Skipper might be lunching.
But he was not there.
Jacques was looking round for an empty corner when he
was hailed by a young German, Kirchenblatt by name, whom
he had first met in Berlin and subsequently in Geneva on
several occasions. Kirchenblatt was having lunch with a friend
and insisted on Jacques joining them. His friend was also a
German, a man called Wachs, whom Jacques did not know.
The two were strangely different. ‘They’re fairly represen-
tative of two characteristic types of East Germans,’ Jacques
thought, ‘the leader and the led.'
Wachs had been an ironworker in his youth. He looked about
forty years old — a man with heavy, vaguely Slavonic features,
wide cheek-bones, a forthright mouth and limpid eyes, solemn
and purposeful to a degree. He kept his big fingers splayed,
like tools laid ready for instant use. He listened to what was
being said, nodding approval, but was himself sparing of words.
His whole deportment indicated a soul at peace with itself,
steadfast courage, reliability, love of discipline and instinctive
loyalty.
Kirchenblatt was a much younger man. The shape of his
small round head, perked on a scraggy neck, brought to
mind the skull of a bird. His cheek-bones, in contrast with
Wachs’, were not wide but jutted out sharply under each eye.
Usually serious and watchful, his face lit up at times in a some-
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SUMMER, 1914
what disquieting smile — a smile which spread out to the corners
of his mouth, pursed his eyelids and curled back his lips over
his teeth. At such moments a glow of rather cruel sensuality
would kindle in his eyes. He reminded Jacques of certain fierce
Alsatian dogs which show their fangs when at play. He was
a native of East Prussia, the son of a Herr Professor — one of
those cultured, Nietzschean Germans whom Jacques had fre-
quently met in advanced German circles. For them laws were
non-existent. A peculiar sense of honour, a certain chivalrous
Romanticism, and a taste for lawless, dangerous living, bound
such men together in a sort of higher caste, deeply conscious
of its aristocratic character. In open rebellion against a social
order to which, after all, he was indebted for his mental
training, Kirchenblatt lived on the fringe of the international
revolutionary parties, being temperamentally too much of an
anarchist to adhere unreservedly to socialism, yet balking by
instinct both at the levelling theories of democracy and at the
feudal privileges surviving in Imperial Germany.
The conversation, which was held in German because Wachs
had some difficulty in understanding French, turned at once
on Berlin’s attitude towards the policy of Austria. Kirchenblatt
appeared to be well-informed regarding the frame of mind
of the high officials of the German Empire. He had just heard
that the Kaiser’s brother. Prince Heinrich, had been sent to
London on a special mission to the King of England, a semi-
official move which coming at such a time seemed to imply
that William II was personally desirous of winning over
George V to his own views about the Austro-Servian dispute.
‘What views?’ Jacques wanted to know. ‘That’s the whole
point. To what extent does blackmail enter into the attitude
of the Imperial Government? Trauttenbach, whom I met in
Geneva, claims to have it on reliable authority that the Kaiser
himself refuses to contemplate the possibility of war. And yet
it seems unthinkable that Vienna should take so bold a line
without being sure of Germany’s support.’
‘Yes,’ Kirchenblatt agreed, ‘it does seem likely, as far as I
can judge, that Kaiser Wilhelm agrees to and approves of the
principle underlying the Austrian claims. And even that he’s
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
egging Vienna on to act as rapidly as possible, so as to con-
front Europe with a fait accompli. Which, after all, is first-rate
pacifism.’ Then, with a sardonic smile : ‘Why certainly ! For
isn’t that the best way of preventing any reaction on the part
of Russia? To hasten on an Austro-Servian war with a view
to saving the peace of Europe?’ Then, sobering up suddenly:
‘But it’s clear, on the other hand, that the Kaiser, advised as
he is, has duly weighed up the risks — the risk of a peremptory
“No” from Russia, the risk of a general war. Only there’s this
to be said, he must consider that risk as practically negligible.
Is he right? That’s the whole question.’ His features settled
again into a Mephistophelian grin. ‘Just now, I see the Kaiser
as a poker-player holding good cards and having to deal with
faint-hearted opponents. Of course the possibility has occurred
to him that he may lose, by a stroke of ill-luck. In any game
somebody has got to lose. But then his cards are pretty good —
and why should a man dread a stroke of ill-luck to the point of
throwing in an excellent hand?’
It was easy to tell, by his caustic tone and dare-devil smile,
that Kirchenblatt knew from personal experience what it is
to hold good cards and back one’s luck — with the roof the
limit !
5
Friday, July 24
MME DE FONTANIN’s MEDITATION BESIDE HER HUSBAND’S COFFIN
A T dawn, as was the custom at the Nursing Home, the body
of Jerome de Fontanin had been placed in its coffin. Imme-
diately after, it had been removed to the special building at
the far end of the garden in which the rules of the establishment
265 K*
SUMMER, 1914
ordained dead patients should await their obsequies — as far
as possible from the living patients.
Madame de Fontanin, who during her husband’s long death-
agony had hardly left his bedside for a moment, was sitting
in the cell-like basement room to which the body had been
relegated. She was alone, having just sent Jenny to their flat
in the Avenue de I’Observatoire to fetch the black dresses both
would need for the funeral next day. After escorting his sister
to the gate Daniel had lingered on in the garden, smoking
a cigarette.
Sitting in a cane chair under the solitary window, through
which a cavernous light entered the little mortuary, Madame de
Fontanin was schooling herself to face the daylong vigil beside
her dead. She had her back to the light and her eyes were
fixed on the plain deal coffin resting on two black trestles in
the centre of the room. The only outer sign of the dead man’s
identity was a small brass plate inscribed :
Jerome Elias de Fontanin,
May II, 1857- July, 23, 1314.
She was feeling calm, composed — safe in God’s keeping. The
mental stress of that first night, that momentary weakness which
the violence of the shock indeed excused, had passed away.
Bereavement had lost its sting; all she now felt was a pensive
melancholy. She was so used to living in secure communion
with the Force that governs universal life, with that great All
into which each of us, when his brief hour is done, must merge
his personality, that death’s aspect had no terrors for her. Even
as a girl she had gazed at her father’s corpse without any
consternation; not for a moment had she doubted that the
spiritual presence of him whom she had venerated, who had
been her daily guide, would still befriend her after his body
had returned to the dust. And time had proved her right;
never had she lacked his guidance — as yet again the happenings
of the past week had demonstrated. Beyond the grave he had
ever been closely associated with her life and struggles, had
steered her through perplexities and inspired her decisions.
Thus, to-day, she could not look on Jerome’s death as an
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
ending. Nothing dies, but all things change and are trans-
formed — as season follows season. Gazing at the coffin sealed
for ever on her husband’s mortal form, she felt a quiet ecstasy,
like the feeling that came over her each autumn when, in her
garden at Maisons, she watched the leaves she had seen bur-
geoning in the spring fall one by one, each in its due hour, well
knowing that their fall meant no impairment of the vital forces
latent in the trunk, that its life impulse was intact as ever.
For her, death was but an incident of life and to contemplate
without alarm that ineluctable return to the endless cycle of
existence was a way of humbly sharing in God’s inscrutable
design.
In the sepulchral coolness of the air hovered the sweet, rather
sickly perfume of the roses placed by Jenny on the coffin.
Unthinkingly Madame de Fontanin was rubbing the nails of her
right hand on her left palm. She had formed the habit, when
she had finished dressing in the morning, of sitting for some
minutes at her window and, as she polished her nails, com-
muning with herself before entering on the new day ; this she
called her morning prayer. This habit had developed in her
an associative reflex between the act of polishing her nails and
invoking guidance front Above.
So long as Jerome lived, estranged from her though he might
be, she had nursed a secret hope that one day her great, all-
enduring love would enter into its reward on earth — that
Jerome would come back to her repentant and reformed. And
then, perhaps, it would be granted them to spend their lives’
decline in close reunion, forgetting all the past. The folly of
those years of waiting she realized only now — now that all hope
was lost for ever. Yet the mental agony she had endured was
still too fresh in her mind for her not to feel a certain relief in
knowing that at last the burden was lifted. Death had dried
up that one bitter spring which for so many years had been
poisoning her life. It was as if involufitarily she were holding
her head high again after a long spell of bondage. A very
human and legitimate feeling, the new-found charm of which
unknowingly she relished. It would have abashed her, had she
been aware of it, but such was the blindness of her faith she
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SUMMER, 1914
could not direct a truly penetrating glance into the secret places
of her heart. She took for divine grace what was the effect of
purely self-regarding instinct, and thanked God for according
her such peace of mind and resignation. Thus she could yield
herself, without remorse, to her feeling of infinite relief.
She yielded herself to it all the more readily since this day
of watching beside her dead was for her no more than a
breathing-space before a spell of strenuous activity. To-morrow,
Saturday, there was the funeral, then the return home and
Daniel’s departure. After that, on Sunday, would begin the
urgent, arduous task of saving the honour of her children’s
name. She had determined to investigate her husband’s affairs
on the spot, at Trieste and in Vienna. Neither Jenny nor Daniel
had yet been informed of this intention. Guessing that her son
would be against it, she preferred to postpone a fruitless argu-
ment; for her mind was made up. The Spirit had inspired her
with this audacious project; of that she was assured. Did she
not feel within her, every time her thoughts turned to it, that
peculiar psychic thrill which she knew well, a supernormal
impulse brooking no denial, that evidenced divine behest?
She decided to leave for Austria on Sunday if possible, or
Monday at the latest. She would stay there a fortnight or three
weeks ; if necessary, the whole of August. She would have an
interview with the Official Receiver, and thresh things out with
the directors of the company in liquidation. Failure was out
of the question, provided she were on the spot and could
bring her personal influence to bear. In this respect, indeed,
her intuition was not at fault ; time and time again, in difficult
circumstances, she had been given to see her power. But
naturally it never crossed her mind that this power might be
ascribed to personal charm. She saw in it nothing else than
a divine interposition, and in herself merely a vehicle of the
Immanent Will.
She had another delicate task to carry out at Vienna; she
desired to get in touch with the girl named Wilhelmina some
letters from whom she had found in Jerome’s luggage — childish,
affectionate letters which had deeply touched her.
It was only after she had closed her dead husband’s eyes
268
FRIDAY, JULY 24
that she had brought herself to go through his luggage. She
had done this during the previous night at an hour when she
could count on being left to herself, for she wished to keep
from the children their father’s secrets, up to the end. What
had taken longest was getting together the various letters and
other documents scattered haphazard amongst his effects. For
a whole hour she had handled the dead man’s personal belong-
ings, at once luxurious and shabby, the jetsam of a life : frayed
silk shirts, well-cut suits worn threadbare, still fragrant with
the cool, exotic, bitter-sweet perfume — of citron, lavender and
cuscus-grass — to which Jerome had been faithful for thirty
years, and which had never failed to thrill her like a caress.
Unpaid bills trailed everywhere, even in the boot- trays and
dressing-case: statements of account from banks and con-
fectioners, from shoe-makers and florists, from jewellers and
doctors — and some quite unlooked-for bills, one from a Bond
Street Chinese pedicure, another from a goldsmith’s in the Rue
de la Paix for a lady’s silver-gilt toilet-case. A pawn-ticket issued
at Trieste recorded the deposit, for a preposterously low sum,
of one pearl tie-pin and one fur-lined coat with sealskin collar.
In a wallet stamped with a count’s coronet the photographs
of Madame de Fontanin, of Daniel and Jenny, were stowed
alongside a set of photographs, with dedications, of a Viennese
opera-singer. And finally, hidden away in a sheaf of German
magazines with licentious illustrations, Madame de Fontanin
found to her surprise a well-thumbed pocket Bible printed on
India paper. . . . She effaced everything from her memory —
except the little Bible. How often, in the course of their heart-
rending ‘explanations,’ when Jerome was condoning his misdeeds
with his usual virtuosity, had he exclaimed : ‘You judge me too
harshly. Sweetheart. I’m not so bad as you think.’ It was true.
Only the Spirit knows the truth of human hearts, by what
ditours and for what necessary ends, God’s creatures slowly
climb towards perfection.
Misted with tears, her eyes rested on the coffin, the roses
with their petals falling one by one.
‘Yes,’ she whispered passionately. ‘Yes, indeed there was a
soul of goodness in you, Jerome dear.’
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SUMMER, 1914
She was roused from her musings by the arrival of Nicole
Hequet, accompanied by Daniel.
Nicole was looking her best ; her mourning frock showed off'
the pink-and-white freshness of her skin. The sparkle in her
eyes, her arching eyebrows, always made her seem in eager
haste to proffer her young beauty. She bent and kissed her
aunt ; Madame de Fontanin was grateful to her for respecting
the silence of the death-chamber, refraining from the common-
places of condolence. Nicole went up to the coffin, and halted
before it, her arms drooping and her hands clasped. Watching
her, Madame de Fontanin wondered if she were praying, or lost
in memories of her childhood, in which her uncle Jerome had
bulked so large, and she had known such agonies of shame.
After some moments of this enigmatic immobility, she returned
to her aunt, kissed her again on the forehead and left the room
followed by Daniel who had remained standing behind his
mother.
When they were outside Nicole stopped and looked at Daniel.
‘What time to-morrow?’
‘We start from here at eleven, and go straight to the cemetery.’
They were alone in the semi-darkness of the hall. Before
them stretched the sunlit garden; convalescent patients, clad
in light dressing-gowns, were reclining in deck-chairs along the
borders of the lawns. In the warm, windless radiance of the July
afternoon, in the golden air, summer seemed installed for ever.
‘Pastor Gregory,’ Daniel went on, ‘will say a short prayer
at the graveside. Mamma was against any sort of funeral
ceremony.’
‘How splendid Aunt Therese is!’ she whispered. ‘So brave
and calm. Just perfect — as she always is.’
He thanked her with a friendly smile. Though the childish-
ness had left her eyes, the blue pupils had still their crystal-
clear purity and the gentle languor which in the past had
stirred him so profoundly.
‘What ages it is since I saw you last!’ he exclaimed, and
added : ‘Tell me, Nico, are you happy?’
Nicole’s gaze which had been fixed on the bright green vistas
of the garden seemed to traverse a great distance before settling
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
on Daniel. A look of distress crossed her face; he fancied her
on the brink of tears.
‘Of course,’ he murmured awkwardly. ‘You too, poor little
Nico — you’ve had more than your share of troubles.’
Only then did he notice how much she had changed. The
lower part of her face had thickened. Under the discreet make-
up, behind the artificial pinkness of the cheeks, he had a
glimpse of features that had lost something of their freshness,
seemed a little worn.
‘Still, Nico, you’re young, you have your life before you;
you should be happy.’
‘Happy?’ she repeated with a dubious shrug of her shoulders.
He gazed at her in surprise. ‘Why, of course ! Why ever
shouldn’t you be happy?’
Again her gaze was lingering on the sunlit lawns. After a
silent moment, without turning her eyes, she said :
‘Life’s strange, isn’t it? I’m only twenty-five and I feel so
old already.’ She hesitated, added : ‘And so lonely.’
‘Lonely?’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes were still fixed on the distant scene. ‘My
mother, my girlhood — it all seems far, far away. I’ve no child.
And — I can never have one now; all that’s over.’ Her voice
was soft, resigned.
‘Anyhow you have your husband,’ Daniel ventured to remind
her.
‘Yes, I’ve my husband. We have a deep, dependable love
for each other. He’s kind and understanding. He does all he
can to make my life agreeable.’
Daniel kept silent.
She moved aside to the wall and leaned against it. When
she spoke again, without raising her voice, stiffening up a little,
it seemed as if she were nerving herself to say everything, quite
simply, without shirking the truth.
‘But why deny it? After all, you know, Felix and I haven’t
so very much in common. He’s thirteen years older than I am,
he has never treated me as an equal. Anyhow he has towards
all women a paternal rather condescending attitude, the same
that he has towards his patients.’
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SUMMER, 1914
A picture of Hequet rose in Daniel’s mind : H^quet with his
grey temples, fretted by tiny wrinkles, his keen short-sighted
stare, his quiet, precise, unbending manner. Why had he
married Nicole? Was it as a man picks a flower he fancies on
the wayside? Or, more probably, was it not with a desire to
graft upon his work-filled life a httle of that youth, that natural
charm, which doubtless he had always lacked?
‘And don’t forget,’ Nicole continued, ‘that he has his own
life, a busy surgeon’s life. You know what that means. He’s at
the beck and call of others from morn till night. Oftener than
not he doesn’t have his meals at the same time as I do. As
a matter of fact it’s better so ; we haven’t much to say to each
other, nothing to share, not a single taste in common, not a
memory, nothing ! Oh, no, we never quarrel — never the slightest
tiff!’ She laughed. ‘For one thing, the moment he expresses
a desire, whatever it may be, I say “Yes.” As a matter of
course. His wishes are my law.’ The laugh had left her lips,
and she said with curious slowness: ‘I’m so utterly indifferent
— to everything!’
Gradually she had moved away from the wall towards the
door. Lost in thoughts, she walked down the short flight of
steps. Daniel followed in silence. With a free, spontaneous move-
ment, she swung round and faced him, smiling.
‘I must tell you a little story. . . . Last winter he had some
new book-cases made for our morning-room, and we decided
to get rid of a little mahogany writing-desk for which there
wasn’t any room. It had been my mother’s — but that was all
the same to me; I’ve nothing of my own, I’m not attached
to anything. Only that writing-desk had to be emptied out and
it was full of letters and things I’d never seen before. I found
a heap of letters father and mother had written to each other,
letters from my grandmother and family friends, old account-
books, wedding-cards, and so forth. A scrap-heap of the past,
dead memories of Paris, Royat, Biarritz. Old things, old events,
old people, all dead and forgotten. I read every line before
I threw the lot into the fire. And I cried over it for a fortnight.’
She laughed again. ‘A fortnight, a whole delicious fortnight!
Felix hadn’t an inkling — anyhow he wouldn’t have understood.
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
He doesn’t know a thing about me or my childhood or my
thoughts.’
They were strolling slowly across the garden. As they walked
by a group of patients she dropped her voice.
‘My present life — well, I can manage ; but sometimes I dread
the future. As things are, you see, the days are pretty full for
each of us. My husband has his hospital, his practice, the daily
round. And I’ve heaps of things to do, people to see, and so
on. I’ve taken up my violin again and I do a bit of music
with my friends. We dine out several times a week; we’ve got
to mix in society on account of my husband’s position. But
how will it be later on, when he’s retired from practice? When
we stop going out at night? That’s what terrifies me. What’s
to become of us when we’re a couple of old people who’ve got
to spend whole evenings facing each other in front of the fire?’
‘My poor dear Nico,’ Daniel said gravely, ‘what you’ve just
been telling me distresses me beyond measure.’
She broke into a peal of laughter, a gay, quite unexpected
echo of her youthful self.
‘How absurd you are!’ she laughed. ‘I’m not complaining.
That’s the way life is. It’s not a scrap better for other women.
In fact I count myself amongst the lucky ones. No, it’s only
this ; when one’s little, one imagines all sorts of silliness, one
expects life to work out like a fairy-tale. . . .’
They were near the gates.
‘I’m awfully glad to have seen you,’ she said. ‘You look
splendid in your uniform. When does your military service end?’
‘In October.’
‘So soon?’
He laughed. ‘So the time seemed short to you?’
She had halted. A shower of splintered sunbeams was falling
on her face, flecking her hair with the pale translucencies of
yellow tortoiseshell.
revoir' She held out her hand with frank, spontaneous
affection. ‘Mind you tell Jenny how awfully sorry I was to
have missed her. Anyhow next winter, when you’re back in
Paris, you must come and look me up now and then. A charity
visit, you know. We can have a good talk about old times, and
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SUMMER, 1914
play at being old cronies raking up the ashes of the past, can’t
we? It’s curious how as I grow older I get more and more
attached to the past. You’ll come then? It’s a promise?’
For a moment he peered intently into her eyes, attractive
eyes, a little over-large, too round, but crystal-clear.
‘It’s a promise,’ he said gravely.
6
Friday, July 24
jenny’s afternoon at the fontanins’ flat
I T was the first time since Sunday that Jenny had set foot
outside the Nursing Home ; the most she had done was to take
a short daily stroll with Daniel in the grounds. In death’s
proximity she had lived through those four interminable days
like a phantom lost amongst the living, and everything happen-
ing round her had seemed meaningless, irrelevant. And when
her brother had seen her into a taxi, once she realized she was
alone in the sunbright street, she could not repress a feeling of
deliverance. But before the car had reached the outskirts of
Paris, she grew aware that the vague distress which had been
gnawing at her heart for four days past had returned to her.
Indeed it seemed as if that distress, free now of the restraint
imposed by others’ presence at the Nursing Home, had, in her
solitude, acquired a sudden, terrifying intensity.
It was one o’clock when she alighted from the taxi at her
door.
Cutting as short as possible the concierge’s voluble con-
dolence, she ran upstairs to the flat.
In it disorder reigned, doors stood wide open as if the
occupants had fled in panic. The garments tossed on to the
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
bed, the shoes lying on the carpet and the open drawers in
Madame de Fontanin’s room gave an impression that burglars
had ransacked it. The little table on which the two women,
who had done without a servant for two years past, took their
hasty meals, was still strewn with the remains of their in-
terrupted dinner. All that, Jenny reflected, had to be tidied up ;
she must see to it that next day, on returning from the cemetery,
her mother would not find the flat in this shocking chaos, an
all too vivid reminder of the dreadful moments she had lived
through here, on that tragic Sunday evening.
Feeling oppressed, uncertain where to begin, Jenny went to
her bedroom. Evidently she had forgotten to shut her window
when she left ; a sudden shower during the previous night had
drenched the floor, and a gust of wind had scattered the letters
on her desk, upset a vase, stripped the petals off a bunch of roses.
As she slowly removed her gloves, gazing at the havoc round
her, she tried to pull herself together. Her mother had given
her detailed instructions. From the writing-desk she was to
get the key of the lumber-room at the far end of the flat, hunt
through the boxes in it, and search in the wardrobe till she
found two mourning shawls and crepe veils. Mechanically she
took from its peg the overall she wore for housework in the
mornings, and slipped it on. But then her strength failed her,
she stumbled to the bed and sat down on it. The silence of the
flat seemed weighing on her shoulders.
‘What can it be that’s making me so tired?’ she prevaricated
with herself
A week ago she had been moving briskly to and fro in these
same rooms, sped by the impetus of life. Less than a week —
four days ago. Had four days been enough to shatter the peace
of mind she had so dearly won?
She sat crouching forward as if a dead weight rested on her
back. Tears would have been a solace, but she had always been
denied that anodyne of weaklings. Even when she was a little
girl, her sorrows had been tearless, arid, reticent. Dry-eyed,
she set her gaze roaming over the papers lying on the floor,
the ornaments on the mantelpiece, until it came to rest on the
mirror, held by the dazzling sheen reflected from the sunlit
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SUMMER, 1914
sky. And suddenly in the silvery haze, for a spell-bound
second, the face of Jacques took form. She rose hastily, closed
shutters and window, gathered up the flowers and letters, and
went out into the passage.
The air in the lumber-room was stifling. The heat intensified
its smell of dust, wool, camphor, and old newspapers toasting
in the sun. With an effort she climbed on to a stool and opened
the high-pitched window. With the fresh air harsh light poured
into the narrow room, bringing out the forlorn ugliness of the
objects piled within it: empty trunks, discarded bedding, oil-
lamps, school-books, cardboard boxes smeared with patches
of grey dust and speckled with dead flies. To get to the corner
in which the trunks were stacked, she had to shift bodily a
dressmaker’s dummy bonneted with an antiquated lamp-shade ;
the spangled flounces were held up by bunches of artificial
violets. For a moment, gazing at this portentous work of
needlecraft which, throughout her childhood, had lorded it
on the drawing-room piano, she gave way to sentimental
memories. Then she set manfully to work, opening boxes,
rummaging in drawers, carefully replacing naphthalene sachets
the pungency of which stung her nostrils and made her feel
sick. Half fainting, bathed in sweat, humiliated by her languor
and struggling against it, she doggedly kept to her task — at
least it saved her from her thoughts.
Then like a sudden shaft of light rending the gloom, an idea,
definite if but vaguely formulated, struck on her consciousness
at its most sensitive point, and brought her to a stop. ‘Nothing
is ever hopeless; all is always possible.’ Yes, after all, she was
young, and before her lay the best part of life, uncharted,
teeming with possibilities.
And what she was glimpsing now behind these common-
places was something so amazing, so alarming that it left her
dazed. It had flashed on her that if after Jacques’ desertion
she had managed to recover and regain her self-control, this
was only because she had then been fortunate enough to banish
utterly the faintest hope. . . . ‘Am I,’ she wondered, ‘beginning
to hope again?’
So affirmative was the unspoken answer that a tremor shook
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
her body and she had to lean against the wardrobe to steady
herself. For some minutes she stayed unmoving in a trance-like
coma, her eyes closed, all but stunned into insensibility. Vivid
as in dreams, a pageant of the past sped past her eyes : Jacques
at Maisons, sitting beside her after a game of tennis — she
distinctly saw the tiny beads of sweat standing out on his fore-
head; Jacques walking beside her along the forest road, after
they had seen the old dog run over outside a garage — she
heard his anxious question, ‘Do you often think about death?’ ;
Jacques at the little garden-gate kissing her shadow on the
moonlit wall — she heard his footfalls on the grass as he fled
into the darkness. . . . She was still leaning against the wardrobe,
shivering despite the heat. Within her reigned a deep, fantastic
silence, and the rumble of the city drifting in through the high
window came from far away, from another world. How was she
to quell that insensate yearning to be happy which her meeting
with Jacques had revived four days ago? She was beginning
another illness, one that would last indefinitely — only too well
she knew it. And this time there would be no return to health,
for she would no longer have the wish for it.
Hardest to bear was being alone, always alone. True, Daniel
had been all attention to her while they had been together at
Neuilly. Only that morning while they were breakfasting
together in the public dining-room at the Nursing Home,
struck perhaps by Jenny’s listlessness, he had taken her hand
and murmured with an earnest look : ‘What’s the trouble, Jenny
darling?’ She had shaken her head evasively, withdrawn her
hand. It had always been a bitter grief to her that, loving her
big brother so intensely, she had never found anything to say to
him, anything that might have levelled once for all the barriers
that life, their characters, perhaps their very kinship, had set
up between them. No, there was no one in whom she could
confide. No one ever had really listened to her, understood.
No one ever would be able to understand her. No one? He,
perhaps. Perhaps one day. . . . Deep down in her a small, secret
voice whispered, ‘My Jacques!’ A blush mantled her cheeks.
She felt worn out, aching in every limb. A glass of cold water
might do her good.
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SUMMER, 1914
With blind, groping steps, steadying herself against the wall,
she made her way to the kitchen. The water from the tap
seemed to her ice-cold. Dipping her hands in a basin, she
dabbed her eyes and forehead. Her strength was gradually
returning; she need only wait a while. . . . Opening the
window, she rested her elbows on the sill. Golden heat-haze,
like a drift of dancing atoms, shimmered on the roofs. In the
Luxembourg Station a locomotive was whistling forlornly. How
often during the last few weeks, on afternoons like this, had she
gazed out of that window, while she waited for the tea-kettle to
boil ! Then she had been almost gay, humming a cheerful tune.
And suddenly her heart grew faint with longing to be that Jenny
of last spring, the convalescent girl who had recovered peace.
In a whisper she asked herself: ‘How shall I ever find the
courage to face to-morrow, all the to-morrows coming after?’
But the words that rose to her lips conveyed only a conventional
idea; they did not express the real truth, her inmost feeling.
For now she had regained hope, she accepted suffering, too.
And suddenly this girl who never smiled felt and perceived
clearly as if she had been looking in a mirror — a small, un-
certain smile rippling on her lips.
7
Friday^ July 24
JAGQ,UES VISITS DANIEL* S STUDIO
Several times in the afternoon, and even during his lunch
with the two Germans, Jacques had asked himself: would he
go and see Daniel? And each time his answer had been,
‘Certainly not. Why should I?’
Nevertheless, after leaving the restaurant with Kirchenblatt,
as he was crossing the Square in front of the Bourse and
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
walking past the metro station, it suddenly occurred to him that
it was only three, and the meeting he meant to attend did not
begin till five. ‘This would have been just the moment,’ he
reflected, ‘to look in at the Nursing Home — if I’d wanted to.’
He halted, in two minds. ‘Anyhow once it’s over. I’ll stop
thinking about it.’ His mind made up, he -left the German
abruptly, ran down the steps and took the underground to
Neuilly.
At the entrance of the Nursing Home he found Victor, his
brother’s chauffeur, standing beside the car, smoking a cigarette.
That meant that Antoine would be present at the interview.
So much the better !
But, as he was entering the grounds, he saw his brother
approaching.
‘If you’d come a bit earlier. I’d have given you a lift back. I
can’t wait now. Look here, how about dining with me to-night?
No? Well — when?’
Jacques ignored the questions. ‘How can I manage to see
Daniel — alone?’ he asked.
‘Quite simple. Madame de Fontanin is staying in the mor-
tuary, and Jenny’s away.’
‘ “Away”?’
‘See that grey roof behind the trees? That’s the mortuary
building. Daniel’s there. The door-porter will tell him you’ve
come.’
‘So Jenny’s not here to-day?’
‘No. Her mother’s sent her to fetch some things from their
place in the Avenue de I’Observatoire. Are you staying long
in Paris? . . . You’ll give me a ring, eh?’
He hurried out of the gate and sprang into the car.
Jacques walked on towards the mortuary. Suddenly he
slowed down. A fantastic scheme had crossed his mind. Turning
on his heel, he walked back to the entrance-gate and hailed
a taxi.
‘To the Avenue de I’Observatoire,’ he said. ‘Quickly !’
He stared obstinately at the trees, the passers-by, the traffic
— anything to keep himself from thinking! For he knew that
if he gave himself a moment’s thought he would abandon
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SUMMER, 1914
this absurd project, to which, despite himself, some secret
voice within was fervently impelling him. Once there, what
should he do? He had no notion. Or, rather, this: justify
himself, cease being the only one to bear the blame. Yes, their
misundertandings must be cleared up, once for all, by plenary
explanation.
He had the car stop at the Luxembourg Gardens, then made
his way on foot, almost at a run — forcing himself not to look
up at that balcony, those windows, which so often in old days
he had come here to gaze at from afar. He dived into the
building and was past the concierge’s room in a flash; he
feared Jenny might have given orders to say she was not at home.
Nothing had changed. These were the stairs he had climbed
so often, chatting with Daniel — a Daniel in knickerbockers
with his schoolbooks under his arm ; up there was the landing
where he had seen Madame de Fontanin for the first time, on
the night of his return from Marseilles ; whence she had bent
down towards the two young truants with no reproach but a
grave smile. Nothing had changed, not even the door-bell
of the flat whose tinkle faintly echoed in the background of
his memory.
In a moment she would be there. What was he to say to her?
His fingers clenched on the banister, he bent forward,
listening. Not a sound behind the door; no footstep. What
could she be doing?
After waiting for some minutes he rang the bell a second
time, less boldly.
Silence again.
Then hurriedly he ran downstairs and called to the concierge.
‘Miss Jenny’s in, isn’t she?’
‘No. Did you know, sir, that poor Monsieur de Fontanin. . . ?’
‘Yes. And I know, too, that Miss Jenny’s in the flat. I’ve
an urgent message for her.’
‘Well, sir, she did come after lunch, but she’s gone now. I
saw her going out good quarter of an hour ago.’
‘So that’s it. She’s left already.’ Dully he stared at the old
woman. He could not have defined his feelings; were they of
vast relief, or bitter disappointment?
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
The meeting in the Rue de Vaugirard did not start till five.
Would he really attend it? He had lost all desire to do so. For
the first time the shadow of a purely personal interest fell
between him and his militant career.
Suddenly he came to a decision. He would go back to Neuilly.
If Jenny had things to do on the way back, he could reach
the Nursing Home before her, await her at the entrance, and
then . . . ! An absurd, foolhardy plan — but anything was
better than tamely to accept defeat.
Chance outwitted him. As he alighted from the tram in
front of the Home, and was wondering what move to make,
someone behind called his name.
Daniel, who had been waiting for a tram in the other direction,
had seen him and was crossing the road.
‘You, Jacques?’ He seemed absolutely thunderstruck. ‘So
you’re still in Paris?’
‘I got back yesterday,’ Jacques said uncomfortably. ‘Antoine
has told me — what’s happened.’
‘He died without regaining consciousness,’ Daniel said
tersely. He seemed still more embarrassed than Jacques;
almost put out by their meeting.
‘I’ve an appointment I absolutely can’t put off,’ Daniel went
on. ‘I’m going to sell some pictures to Ludwigson, as we need
the money; and I’m meeting him at my studio this afternoon.
If I’d had a notion you’d be coming to see me. . . . What’s to
be done? Look here, why shouldn’t you come along with me?
We can have a quiet talk in my studio before Ludwigson turns up.’
‘Right-oh!’ Jacques suddenly abandoned all his plans.
Daniel beamed with gratitude. ‘We can walk a bit of the way,
and take a taxi at the Fortifications.’
The spacious vista of the boulevard before them sweltered
in dazzling light, but the tree-shaded pavement promised well
for walking. Daniel looked at once heroic and grotesque in his
flashing helmet with the horse-tail floating from it; flapping
against his breeches, rapping his spurs, his sword accompanied
each footfall with a martial clank. Haunted by premonitions
of a war, Jacques heard his friend’s explanations with an
inattentive ear. He was always on the brink of interrupting,
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SUMMER, 1914
gripping Daniel’s arm, exclaiming: ‘But, damn it, don’t you
realize what’s threatening you?’ Then a monstrous notion
flashed through his mind, bereft him of speech. Supposing by
some tragic chance the efforts of the Internationalists proved
unavailing, the handsome young dragoon beside him, back
on service on the Lorraine frontier, would surely fall on the
first day. His heart missed a beat, the words he had meant to
say stuck in his throat.
Meanwhile Daniel was chattering away.
‘Ludwigson said to me, “Round about five,” but I’d like to
sort out the pictures before he comes. You see, it’s up to me
to save the situation; my father’s left us nothing but his debts.’
He gave a jarring laugh. That laugh, his volubility, the
jerkiness of his speech, betrayed a nervous state unusual with
him. It was due to various circumstances : the shock of seeing
Jacques again, distressing memories of their first encounter
and his eagerness to bring back to their conversation its bygone
note of intimacy, and break down his friend’s reserve by a free
exchange of confidences. Added to this was the exhilaration of
the radiant summer day, of a walk in the open air after four
days’ strict confinement by a deathbed.
So httle mindful was Jacques of the fact that dormant some-
where, in his name, was a substantial fortune, that the idea he
could come to his friend’s aid never entered his head. Daniel,
too, had equally forgotten it; otherwise he would not have
breathed a word of his financial straits.
‘Debts — and a dishonoured name !’ Daniel’s voice was
gloomy. ‘Yes, he’ll have poisoned our lives right up to the end.
Only this morning I opened a letter written to him by some girl
in England to whom he’d promised money. He was travelling
to and fro between London and Vienna and he kept a woman
at each end. Like a sailor with a girl in every port! Don’t
imagine,’ he added hastily, ‘that I care a damn about his —
his propensities ; it’s all the rest that is so beastly.’
Jacques gave an evasive nod.
‘Do you wonder why I talk like that?’ Daniel went on. ‘I’ve
an immense grievance against my father. Not in the least on
account of his philanderings. If I said “Quite the contrary,” it
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
would be nearer the truth. Queer, isn’t it? Never once did we
talk frankly, familiarly, together — and now he’s dead. But if
any intimacy between us had been possible, it would have been
on that topic only: women, love-affairs. It’s perhaps because
I’m so like him,’ he mused aloud, ‘exactly like him — incapable
of holding out against “temptations” of that order, incapable
even of feeling a sense of guilt when I’ve given way.’ After a
slight hesitation he added : ‘You’re not like that, are you?’
Jacques, too, during the past four years had been apt to
yield to such temptations, but never without a sense of guilt.
For, lurking in some ill-aired corner of his personality, there
remained, though he was not aware of it, a vestige of that
puerile discrimination between the ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ which
had cropped up so often in his talks with Daniel.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve never had that courage— the courage of
accepting oneself as one is.’
‘ “Courage”? Isn’t it, rather, weakness — or self-conceit? Or
anything else you like to call it? I imagine that for characters
like mine this running from one passion to another is the
normal, necessary course, their natural tempo. One should
never hold back from anything that comes one’s way,’ he con-
cluded fervently, as if reiterating a pledge made with himself
Jacques’ eyes lingered appreciatively on the manly, clean-
cut outlines of the face beneath the helmet-peak. ‘Daniel,’ he
mused, ‘has the luck of being good-looking. To speak of
“passion” with such assurance one needs to be “irresistible,” to
be used to find women running after one. Perhaps, too, one
needs to have had experiences of a different sort from mine.’
It was in the childish embrace of Lisbeth, the young, flaxen-
haired Alsatian girl, that he had taken his first lesson in the
amorous art. Daniel’s had come when he was younger; his
introduction to sensual pleasure had been at the expert hands
of the ‘professional’ who had given him shelter at Marseilles.
Perhaps, Jacques thought, those very different initiations had
left their mark for ever. Does the first experience, he won-
dered, give a permanent bias to one’s personality? Or, on the
contrary, is that first experience governed by certain secret
affinities, to which one will be subject throughout life?
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SUMMER, 1914
As if he had guessed the turn Jacques’ thoughts had taken,
Daniel exclaimed :
‘It’s appalling, the tendency we have to complicate these
problems! What’s love? A matter of health — of physical and
mental fitness. Personally, I accept verbatim lago’s definition
— remember? — “It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission
of the will.” Yes, that’s all love is, and it’s a mistake to think it
anything else. An uprush of the vital sap. lago knew what
he was talking about !’
‘I see you haven’t lost your habit of quoting English,’ Jacques
smiled. He had no desire to embark on a discussion of ‘love.’
He glanced at his watch. The telegrams from abroad did not
reach the Humanite office before four-thirty or five.
Daniel noticed the glance.
‘Oh, we’ve heaps of time,’ he said. ‘But we can talk better
at my place.’
He signalled to a taxi.
On their way, to keep the conversation going, Daniel con-
tinued talking about himself and his love-affairs at Luneville
and Nancy, vaunting the charms of the short-lived liaison.
Suddenly he felt abashed.
‘You let me go on ratthng away, and you just look at me,’
he said. ‘What’s in your mind?’
Jacques gave a slight start. Once again he felt an impulse
to plunge into the topic haunting all his thoughts. Once again
he shrank from it.
‘What’s in my mind? Why — all that !’
During the silence that ensued each was gloomily wondering
whether the picture of his friend, so treasured in remembrance,
still had any semblance of reality.
‘Take the Rue de Seine,’ Daniel called to the driver. Turning
to Jacques, he added: ‘It’s just struck me — you’ve not seen my
place yet, have you?’
Daniel had rented this studio in the year preceding his
military service. Ludwigson was still paying the rent, on the
amiable pretext that Daniel used it to store the records of
their Art Review. It was situated in the top storey of an old
house with high windows, at the back of a paved courtyard.
284
FRIDAY, JULY 24
Dark, smelly, and decrepit, the old staircase had yet a certain
grandeur; it was spacious and adorned with a wrought-iron
balustrade. Here and there the flagstones had caved in. The
door of the studio, pierced with a spy-hole like those in prison
cells, was opened by Daniel with a massive key which he
had procured from the concierge.
Jacques followed his friend into a huge attic room with a
sloping ceiling, lit by a large, dust-grimed window. While
Daniel bustled about the room, Jacques examined it with
interest. The walls were distempered a uniform neutral grey,
without a touch of colour. Two low alcoves, screened by half-
drawn curtains, were let into the back wall of The studio ; one
was painted white and served as a dressing-room; the other,
hung with dark red cloth, contained a large, low bed. In a
corner stood an architect’s trestle-table, piled with books,
albums and magazines; above it hung a green-shaded lamp.
Under the dust-sheets which Daniel was hastily removing was
a collection of easels on casters and chairs of various shapes
and sizes. Stowed in a deal canterbury set against the wall
were mounted canvases and drawing-blocks, only the edges of
which were visible.
Daniel rolled up to Jacques a frayed leather armchair.
‘Do sit down. I’ll wash my hands.’
The chair-springs jangled as Jacques sat down. Gazing
through the window, he saw a vista of house-roofs bathed in
golden light, and recognized the dome of the Institute, the
steeples of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the Saint Sulpice towers.
Glancing back towards the dressing-room, he had a glimpse
of Daniel through the gap between the curtains. Daniel had
taken off his tunic and put on a pale blue pyjama coat. Sitting
before a looking-glass, he was smoothing his hair with his
palms, smilingly observing his reflected self. Jacques was
taken aback; he felt as if he had stumbled upon a secret.
Daniel was handsome, his profile clean-cut as a cameo, but he
always seemed so little conscious of this, and carried his good
looks with such manly unaffectedness, that Jacques had never
pictured his friend lingering thus complacently before a mirror.
Suddenly, as Daniel began walking towards him, the thought
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SUMMER, 1914
of Jenny set him tingling with emotion. Though there was no
real likeness between brother and sister, both had inherited
from Jerome a characteristic elegance of build, long, lithe
limbs which gave an unmistakable resemblance to their ways
of walking.
He rose quickly and moved towards the rack containing the
canvases.
‘No,’ Daniel said, following him up. ‘That’s the dump for
my early stuff. The 191 1 vintage. Everything I painted that
year was full of reminiscences. You remember the cruel remark
that Whistler — wasn’t it? — made about Burne-Jones: “It’s
like something that might be quite good,” or words to that effect.
Have a look at this, instead.’ He picked out some canvases all
depicting the same nude with slight variations. ‘I did these
just before my military service. It’s these studies which have
helped me most to understand. . . . ’
Jacques supposed Daniel had left the phrase unfinished.
‘Understand what?’ he asked.
‘Why, that, of course. That back, those shoulders. It’s essen-
tial in my opinion to select some tangible object — that back,
for instance — and plod away at it till one begins to discern the
truth — the simple, vital truth that is a quality of all solid,
eternal things. I believe that when one spares no pains, and
studies thoroughly some given object like that back, those
shoulders, one ends by lighting on a secret, the solution of
everything, a sort of master-key to the universe.’
That back, those shoulders ! Suddenly Jacques thought of
Europe on the brink of war . . .
‘I’ve always owed everything I’ve learnt,’ Daniel went on,
‘to the persistent study of a single model. Why change? You
do much better work when you force yourself to come back
constantly to the same starting-point; when each time you
have to start all over again, and go a bit further in the same
direction. If Td been a novelist, I think that, instead of having
a new set of characters in each successive book. I’d have
always stuck to the same characters, so as to dig a little deeper
every time.’
Jacques kept hostile silence. How artificial, sterile, inop-
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
portune, he deemed such problems of aesthetics ! He had lost
the power of understanding the aim of such existences as
Daniel’s. And when he asked himself: ‘What would they think
of him down in Geneva?’ he was ashamed of his friend.
Daniel picked up his canvases one by one, held them to the
light and gave each a rapid glance, screwing up his eyes,
before putting it back. Now and then he laid one aside, propping
it against the legs of the nearest easel. ‘For Ludwigson.’
Then, shrugging his shoulders, he muttered between his
teeth :
‘When all’s said and done talent hardly matters, though of
course one can’t dispense with it. It’s the work one puts in
that counts. Talent’s a mere sky-rocket, if the work isn’t put in ;
it dazzles for a moment, but leaves nothing behind.’ Regret-
fully, it seemed, he laid three successive canvases aside. ‘If only
one could never have to sell “them” anything; and work, work
all one’s life !’
‘So you’re still as wrapped up as ever in your art?’ Jacques’
eyes were still fixed on his friend.
Daniel detected the undertone of slightly disdainful wonder
in Jacques’ voice, and made haste to answer in conciliatory
terms.
‘Well, well, some are born men of action, I suppose — and
some are not !’
Out of prudence he concealed his true opinion, which was
that there were quite enough ‘men of action’ in the world
already — for all the good mankind got out of them. Indeed
it was in the interests of the community that people like himself
and Jacques, whom nature had endowed with gifts enabling
them to develop into artists, should leave the field of action to
such as had no other. In his eyes Jacques had flagrantly
betrayed his natural vocation. And he saw a confirmation of
this view in the fretful, uncommunicative attitude of his boy-
hood’s friend. This was surely proof of a rankling sense of
Irustration, the regrets of those who suffer from a vague aware-
ness they have not fulfilled their destiny, and hide, under a
mask of scorn and bravado, an unavowed impression of having
played false to themselves.
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SUMMER, 1914
Jacques’ face grew hard. When he spoke again his head was
lowered — which made him almost inaudible.
‘Let me tell you, Daniel, you live locked up in your art, and
it’s as if you knew nothing of the world of men. . . . ’
Daniel laid aside the picture he was examining.
‘The world of men?’
‘Yes. Of men who lead the lives of ill-used, tortured animals.
So long as one turns a blind eye to all that, perhaps one can
behave as you do. But once one has had a view of the sufferings
of oppressed humanity, it becomes simply impossible to devote
one’s life to art. It can’t be done. Do you understand me?’
‘I do.’ Daniel’s tone was pensive. He went up to the window
and gazed some moments at the grey expanse of roofs. ‘Yes,’
he was thinking, ‘of course he’s right. The world is full of
misery. But what can one do about it? Everything’s so hope-
less — everything but, precisely, art.’ And he felt even more
appreciative of that marvellous haven in which he had been
privileged to cast anchor. ‘Why should I saddle myself with
the sins and sorrows of the world? I’d only paralyse my
creative energy, stifle my gifts — without benefit to anyone. I
wasn’t born to be an apostle. And then— Jacques may write
me down a monster if he chooses, but I’ve always been deter-
mined, yes, determined to be happy.’ Indeed, since childhood
he had made a point of safeguarding his happiness at all costs,
in the belief — naive may be, but carefully thought out — that
this was his chief duty towards himself No easy duty, for it
involved unremitting vigilance, since, in following the line of
least resistance, a man may plunge headfirst into a sea of
troubles. Certainly the prime condition of his happiness was
freedom, and he was well aware that devotion to a common
cause always involves the sacrifice of freedom. . . . As, however,
he could not confess as much to Jacques, he had to endure in
silence the scornful disapproval he had seen in his friend’s eyes.
Turning, he went up to Jacques and gazed at him for some
moments questioningly,
‘It’s no use saying you are happy.’ (Jacques had said nothing
of the kind.) ‘On the contrary, you look sad, terribly worried.’
Jacques straightened up. Now, at last, he would speak ! It was
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
as if suddenly he had come to a decision too long postponed,
and the look in his eyes was so earnest that Daniel was dumb-
founded.
An imperious ring at the door-bell jarred the air, giving them
both a start.
‘Ludwigson!’ Daniel breathed.
‘So much the better,’ Jacques thought. ‘For all the good it
would have done . . . !’
‘It won’t take long,’ Daniel whispered. ‘Don’t go; I’ll walk
back with you.’
Jacques shook his head.
‘Must you really go?’
‘Yes.’ His face was set, expressionless.
Daniel cast him a desperately pleading gaze ; then, realizing
Jacques would not give way, made a gesture of discouragement
and hurried to the door.
Ludwigson was wearing a Riviera suit in cream tussore,
closely fitting, with the Legion d’Honneur rosette well in
evidence. His immense head looked as if it had been carved
in putty; the double chin sat snug upon a very low collar.
Ludwigson’s skull was pointed, his eyes were rather narrow,
his cheeks flat. The wide, thick-lipped mouth brought to mind
a rat-trap.
He had evidently counted on discussing prices with Daniel
tete-d-teie, and showed some surprise at the presence of a third
party. Nevertheless, he moved courteously towards Jacques
whom he immediately recognized, though he had only met
him once.
‘Delighted to see you again. I had the pleasure’ — he rolled
the ‘r’ prodigiously — ‘of chatting with you four years ago, at
the Russian Ballet, during the interval. Remember it? You
were studying then for the Ecole Normale.’
‘That’s so,’ Jacques replied. ‘You must have a wonderful
memory.’
‘I have!’ Ludwigson’s lizard-like eyelids dropped and, as if
he wished to confirm Jacques’ eulogy, he addressed himself
to Daniel. ‘It’s from your friend. Monsieur Thibault, I learnt
that in Ancient Greece — at Thebes, if I remember rightly — a
289 L
SUMMER, 1914
candidate for a magisterial post had to prove that he hadn’t
dealt in any form of business for at least ten years. Curious,
don’t you think so? I’ve never forgotten it.’ He turned to
Jacques. ‘I learnt as well from you that night, that in France,
under the old regime, before he had the right to use his title,
a man must have had his — what do you call it? — patent of
nobility for twenty years* at least.’ He added with a graceful
bow, ‘It’s one of my greatest pleasures conversing with well-
educated people.’
Jacques smiled. Then, to cut things short, he hastily took
leave of Ludwigson.
Daniel followed him to the door. ‘Look here, Jacques,’ he
whispered awkwardly. ‘Can’t you possibly wait?’
‘Can’t be done. I’m late already . . . ’
He shunned his friend’s eyes ; that hideous vision — of Daniel
fallen at the front — had come back, wringing his heart.
They shook hands mechanically, flustered by Ludwigson’s
presence.
Jacques himself opened the heavy door, muttering ‘Au
revoir,' and ran quickly down the lightless stairs.
In the street he halted, drew a deep breath and looked at
his watch. The Vaugirard meeting was long since over.
He felt hungry. Entering a confectioner’s, he bought two
croissants and a slab of chocolate; then started off on foot
towards the Bourse.
8
Friday^ July 24
J ACCRUES CALLS AT THE ‘HUMANIT^i’ OFFICES
That Friday evening, July 24th, in Gallot’s and Stefany’s
offices at the Humanite the talk was pessimistic. Every one who
had been in touch with the Skipper showed signs of anxiety.
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FRIDAY, JULY 24
At the Bourse, a sudden panic had forced down the 3 per cent
Government stock to 80, and even — for a short period — to 78
francs. Never since 1871 had the Rente touched so low a level.
And German correspondents reported a similar break on the
Berlin Stock Exchange.
Jaures had paid another call at the Quai d’Orsay in the
afternoon. He had looked very anxious when he came back,
gone straight to his room, shut himself up in it, and remained
there working, refusing to see anybody. His leader for the next
morning was ready. The heading alone had transpired, but
that heading spoke volumes : A Last Chance of Peace. To Stefany
he had observed : ‘The tone of the Austrian Note is shockingly
peremptory. So much so that one’s inclined to wonder whether
Vienna’s aim isn’t to bring these things to a head, and thus to
make any preventive action on the part of the other Powers
impossible.’
Everything, indeed, would seem to have been fiendishly
devised to make confusion worse confounded in Europe. The
responsible French leaders were abroad and would not be back
in Paris until the 31st. They must have heard the news at sea,
when crossing from Russia to Sweden, and it was no easy
matter for them to consult either with the rest of the French
Ministry or with the Allied Governments. (Berchtold had
arranged things so that the Czar should not be apprised of the
Note until after the French President had left the country;
fearing, no doubt, that Poincare’s advice would tend to con-
ciliation.) The Kaiser also was away on a cruise and would
have some difficulty, even if so minded, in promptly urging
counsels of moderation upon Francis Joseph. Furthermore the
Russian strikes, then in full swing, had a paralysing effect on
the Russian leaders, much as the civil war in Ireland impeded
British action. Lastly, the Servian Government had been
plunged during the last few days into the turmoil of a general
election. Most of the Ministers were touring the countryside
for electioneering purposes; the Prime Minister Pachitch was
actually away from Belgrade when the Austrian Note was
handed in.
Definite information was now coming to hand as regards the
291
SUMMER, 1914
Note itself, which had been received on the Thursday by the
Servian Government; its terms had been imparted that day
to the Powers. For all the conciliatory assurances repeatedly
given by Austria (Berchtold had explicitly informed the
Russian and French ambassadors that the claims put forward
would be ‘most reasonable’), the Note was distinctly in the
nature of an ultimatum. The Vienna Government insisted
upon unqualified compliance with its demands and had set a
time-limit within which a reply must be forthcoming — an
unbelievably short time-limit: forty-eight hours — with a view,
it seemed, to preventing the Powers from intervening in
Servia’s favour. A piece of secret information gathered at the
Austrian Foreign Office and forwarded to Jaures by Hosmer
through a Viennese socialist, justified the worst fears. Baron
von Giesl, the Austrian ambassador in Belgrade, was reported
already to have received, along with the order to hand in the
Note, formal instructions to break off diplomatic relations and
leave Servia immediately in the likely event of the Servian
Government not having accepted the Austrian demands
without discussion by 6 p.m. on Saturday. These instructions
suggested that the ultimatum had been drafted deliberately
in provocative and unacceptable terms, so as to enable Vienna
to speed up a declaration of war. Further information con-
firmed these discouraging conjectures. Recalled by wire, the
Chief of the General Staff, Hotzendorf, had cut short his holiday
in the Tyrol and hastily returned to the Austrian capital. The
German ambassador to France, Herr von Schoen, on leave at
Berchtesgaden, had suddenly returned to Paris. Count Berch-
told, after conferring with the Emperor at Ischl, had travelled
back via Salzburg, so as to meet there the German Chancellor,
Bethmann-Hollweg.
Thus everything concurred to give the impression of a vast,
cleverly organized plot. What was Germany’s share in this?
German sympathizers cast all the blame on the Russians, and
accounted for the German attitude by the fact that Germany
had suddenly been informed of the disturbing activities of the
Pan-Slav camarilla and the extent of the military preparations
already under way in Russia. In Government circles at Berlin
292
FRIDAY, JULY 24
the cue was to feign that until now the German leaders had
had no inkling of the Austrian demands and had only learnt
of them from the communication sent to the rest of the Powers.
Jagow, the Secretary of State at the Wilhelmstrasse, had, it
was said, given the British Ambassador a positive assurance to
this effect. Yet it was understood that the text of the Note had
been imparted to Berlin at least two days previously.
Was it to be concluded that Germany was deliberately
backing up Austria; that she actually wanted war? Traut-
tenbach, who had just come over from Berlin, and whom
Jacques had met that evening in Stefany’s office, totally
rejected any such superficial interpretation of the facts. Ger-
many’s attitude was to be accounted for, in his opinion, by the
fact that military circles in Berlin still believed in Russia’s
unpreparedness. Supposing their calculations to be correct, and
the risk of a general conflagration to be non-existent owing to
Russia’s incapacity to go to war, the Germanic Powers could
take any risks — and be certain that their adversary would
‘climb down.’ It was only a question of prompt and vigorous
action. The Austrian troops must be in Belgrade before the
Powers had time to intervene, or even to consult. Germany
would then appear on the scene. Guiltless of the least connivance
or premeditation, she would offer herself as mediator, with a
view to localizing the conflict and settling it by negotiations
which she would herself initiate. For the sake of peace, Europe
would eagerly accept German arbitration and sacrifice the
interests of Servia without much protest. Thanks to Germany,
order would be restored and the issue be all to the advantage
of the Central Powers. The rule of the Dual Monarchy would
be consolidated for a long spell, and the Triple Alliance would
score an unparalleled diplomatic triumph. These assumptions
as to Germany’s secret plans were borne out by certain con-
fidential information gleaned among the familiars of the
Italian Embassy in Berlin.
Stefany having been sent for by the Skipper, Jacques took
Trauttenbach to the Progris, close by.
The atmosphere in the little room was stormy. The
evening papers, the news passed round by members of the
293
SUMMER, 1914
system of alliances would automatically come into play,
France and Russia would have to face the possibility of a war
against the Triple Alliance.’ This move of von Schoen’s seemed
to bring suddenly to light a biased, aggressive attitude on the
part of German imperialism and a deliberate intention to
intimidate all possible opponents. Thus Germany had, more or
less overtly, flung down the gauntlet, and the question now was :
how would France react?
Gallot and Jacques had remained talking in the entrance-
hall and Jacques was just about to leave when a door opened
suddenly. Jaures came out, his forehead beaded with perspira-
tion, his straw hat on the back of his head, his shoulders
hunched, his eyes half hidden under his bushy brows. Under
his burly arm was tucked an attache-case bulging with papers.
He gave the two men a perfunctory glance, replied mechanically
to their greeting, strode across the room with a heavy step,
and was gone.
9
Saturday, July 25
MME. DE FONTANIN AND DANIEL SPEND THE MORNING TOGETHER
AT THE NURSING HOME
Madame de Fontanin and Daniel had spent the night
sitting beside the coffin. Jenny, at her brother’s instance, had
left them, to snatch some hours of sleep.
When she came back it was close on seven. Daniel tapped his
mother lightly on the shoulder.
‘Come, mamma. Jenny’ll stay here while we have a cup
of tea.’
. His tone was affectionate but firm. Madame de Fontanin
296
SATURDAY, JULY 25
turned her tired face towards Daniel. She realized it was no
use resisting. Here was an opportunity, she thought, for letting
him know of her plan to go to Austria. Casting a last glance
at the bier, she followed her son out submissively.
Their early breakfast was served in the same room in the
annexe where Jenny had slept. The open window overlooked
the garden. At the sight of the gleaming tea-service and the
glass j'ars containing butter and honey, a smile of ingenuous
satisfaction lit up Madame de Fontanin’s face. Always for her
the early breakfast with her children had been a cheerful
prelude to the day, a little, hallowed oasis of content in which
her native optimism took a new lease of life.
‘Yes,’ she said as she went up to the table, ‘I can’t deny I’m
hungry. You too, dear, I expect — aren’t you?’
Unthinkingly she began cutting slices of bread and buttering
them. Daniel watched her with a tender smile ; he was moved
at seeing once again in the gay morning light those small
hands, white and plump, gracefully intent upon their ritual
task ; the scene brought back to him the early mornings of his
schooldays.
The sight of the well-stocked breakfast- tray, by a vague
association of ideas, led Madame de Fontanin to remark :
‘I’ve thought of you so much, dear, during these last man-
oeuvres — did you have enough to eat? Sometimes at night I
pictured you sleeping out under a haystack, your clothes all
drenched with rain, and I was so ashamed of being in a
comfortable bed, I couldn’t sleep.’
Bending forward, he laid his hand on his mother’s arm.
‘What ideas you have, mamma! On the contrary, after
being cooped up in barracks it was a treat for us to play at real
war for a bit.’ He was toying with the gold curb-bracelet on
her wrist. ‘And anyhow, mamma, an N.C.O. on manoeuvres
has no trouble about getting a comfortable bed to sleep in.’
He had come out with it rather thoughtlessly; the memory
of certain amorous encounters he had chanced on when in
billets flashed into his mind, giving him a feeling of embarrass-
ment, registered — albeit obscurely — by his mother’s intuitive
mind. She looked away.
L*
297
SUMMER, 1914
Humanite staff, were giving rise to varied and impassioned
comments.
Shortly before nine, there was a sudden revival of hope. Pages
had just spent a few minutes in the Skipper’s room, and found
him in a less gloomy mood. Jaures had observed : ‘It’s an ill
wind that blows nobody good. This move of Austria’s will
oblige the nations of Europe to shake off their torpor.’ Further-
more the latest despatches contained abundant evidence of
the efforts being made by the Socialist International. The
Belgian, Italian, German, Austrian, English, and Russian
parties were in constant touch with the French section, and
were preparing for a combined demonstration on a large scale.
Hopeful news had just been received from the German social-
ists, vouching for the peaceful intentions of their Government.
Neither Bethmann, nor Jagow, least of all the Kaiser, would,
if the social-democrats were to be believed, countenance
being involved in war. Thus there was every reason to expect
a forceful and effective intervention on the part of Germany.
From Russia, too, comforting news were to hand. On receipt
of the Austrian Note, at a hurriedly summoned meeting of the
Cabinet presided over by the Czar, it had been decided to
approach the Austrian Government immediately with an
urgent request for an extension of the time-limit imposed on
Servia. This ingenious move which, without entering into the
merits of the case, dealt merely with the secondary issue of
the time-limit, might well be favourably considered by Vienna.
And any extension, even if only of two or three days, would
give a breathing-space to the European statesmen, during
which they could agree upon some common line of action. In
any case the Russian Foreign Office had lost no time in opening
up definite conversations with the several Ambassadors
accredited to St. Petersburg, which conversations could not
fail to bear fruit. Almost at the same time a wire was received
from London corroborating the earlier hopeful information.
The Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, had taken the initia-
tive in backing up with his full authority the Russian demand
for an extension of the time-limit. Furthermore, he was drafting
an urgent plan for mediation, with which he meant to associate
294
FRIDAY, JULY 24
Germany, Italy, France, and England, the four great Powers
not directly interested in the conflict. A moderate plan, and
one not likely to be rejected, for round the table of this court
of arbitration the partners would be evenly balanced — on the
one side, Germany and Italy to uphold the interests of Austria;
on the other, France and England, to represent the interests
of Servia and the Slavs.
From eleven o’clock onwards, however, evil portents once
more darkened the horizon. There was first of all a rumour that
while Germany had agreed to Sir Edward Grey’s plan, she had
done so in very reticent terms, which seemed to imply she
would not join wholeheartedly in the mediatory action of the
other Powers. Then Marc Levoir came back from the Quai
d’Orsay with the news that, contrary to all expectation,
Austria flatly refused Russia’s appeal for an extension of the
time-limit — which at once struck his hearers as an admission
of her aggressive designs.
About one a.m., when most of the militants had left, Jacques
came back to the HumaniU offices.
In the entrance-hall Gallot was showing out two socialist
deputies who had just left the Skipper’s room. They were the
bearers of a confidential and disquieting piece of information :
that very day, while every Chancellery was relying on the
intervention of Berlin in favour of peace, the German Am-
bassador, Herr von Schoen, who had just come back to Paris,
had called on M. Bienvenu-Martin, acting Secretary of State,
at the Quai d’Orsay, and read to him a declaration made
to him by his Government. This surprising document was
couched in the curt language of a warning, or even of a threat.
Germany coolly declared therein that she approved of both
the substance and the form of the Austrian Note. She more
than hinted that European diplomacy had no business to
interfere. That the conflict should properly remain localized as
between Austria and Servia, and that ‘no third Power’ should
intervene in the dispute, ‘otherwise, the most serious conse-
quences were to be feared.’ All of which clearly meant: ‘We
are determined to back up Austria ; if Russia chooses to inter-
vene in Servia’s favour, we shall have to mobilize, and as the
295
SUMMER, 1914
system of alliances would automatically come into play,
France and Russia would have to face the possibility of a war
against the Triple Alliance.’ This move of von Schoen’s seemed
to bring suddenly to light a biased, aggressive attitude on the
part of German imperialism and a deliberate intention to
intimidate all possible opponents. Thus Germany had, more or
less overtly, flung down the gauntlet, and the question now was :
how would France react?
Gallot and Jacques had remained talking in the entrance-
hall and Jacques was just about to leave when a door opened
suddenly. Jaures came out, his forehead beaded with perspira-
tion, his straw hat on the back of his head, his shoulders
hunched, his eyes half hidden under his bushy brows. Under
his burly arm was tucked an attache-case bulging with papers.
He gave the two men a perfunctory glance, replied mechanically
to their greeting, strode across the room with a heavy step,
and was gone.
9
Saturday^ July 25
MME. DE FONTANIN AND DANIEL SPEND THE MORNING TOGETHER
AT THE NURSING HOME
Madame de Fontanin " and Daniel had spent the night
sitting beside the coffin. Jenny, at her brother’s instance, had
left them, to snatch some hours of sleep.
When she came back it was close on seven. Daniel tapped his
mother lightly on the shoulder.
‘Come, mamma. Jenny’ll stay here while we have a cup
of tea.’
. His tone was affectionate but firm. Madame de Fontanin
296
SATURDAY, JULY 25
turned her tired face towards Daniel. She realized it was no
use resisting. Here was an opportunity, she thought, for letting
him know of her plan to go to Austria. Casting a last glance
at the bier, she followed her son out submissively.
Their early breakfast was served in the same room in the
annexe where Jenny had slept. The open window overlooked
the garden. At the sight of the gleaming tea-service and the
glass jars containing butter and honey, a smile of ingenuous
satisfaction lit up Madame de Fontanin’s face. Always for her
the early breakfast with her children had been a cheerful
prelude to the day, a little, hallowed oasis of content in which
her native optimism took a new lease of life.
‘Yes,’ she said as she went up to the table, ‘I can’t deny Tm
hungry. You too, dear, I expect — aren’t you?’
Unthinkingly she began cutting slices of bread and buttering
them. Daniel watched her with a tender smile ; he was moved
at seeing once again in the gay morning light those small
hands, white and plump, gracefully intent upon their ritual
task ; the scene brought back to him the early mornings of his
schooldays.
The sight of the well-stocked breakfast-tray, by a vague
association of ideas, led Madame de Fontanin to remark :
‘I’ve thought of you so much, dear, during these last man-
oeuvres — did you have enough to eat? Sometimes at night I
pictured you sleeping out under a haystack, your clothes all
drenched with rain, and I was so ashamed of being in a
comfortable bed, I couldn’t sleep.’
Bending forward, he laid his hand on his mother’s arm.
‘What ideas you have, mamma! On the contrary, after
being cooped up in barracks it was a treat for us to play at real
war for a bit.’ He was toying with the gold curb-bracelet on
her wrist. ‘And anyhow, mamma, an N.C.O. on manoeuvres
has no trouble about getting a comfortable bed to sleep in.’
He had come out with it rather thoughtlessly; the memory
of certain amorous encounters he had chanced on when in
billets flashed into his mind, giving him a feeling of embarrass-
ment, registered — albeit obscurely — by his mother’s intuitive
mind. She looked away.
L*
297
SUMMER, 1914
After a short silence she asked timidly :
‘When do you start back?’
‘To-night at nine. My leave is really up at midnight, but
it’ll do if I’m back for six o’clock parade.’
It struck her that the funeral would not be over before half-
past one and they would not be back at the flat till two — that
this last day with Daniel would be cruelly short. As if the same
thought had come to him he said :
‘And I have to go out this afternoon, on urgent business.’
From his tone she guessed that he was concealing something.
But she misjudged its nature. For he had employed exactly the
same evasive, rather too casual tone that he used to assume in
earlier days when, after sitting in front of the fire at home for
an hour or so after dinner, he would rise and say, ‘Sorry,
mamma, but I’ve promised to meet some chaps to-night.’
He had an inkling of her suspicion and made haste to dispel it.
‘I’ve a cheque to cash. A cheque of Ludwigson’s.’
It was true. He did not wish to leave Paris without having
given this money to his mother.
She did not seem to have heard. She was drinking her tea as
she always did, in little scalding sips, without putting down her
cup, with a far-away look in her eyes. Her heart was heavy with
thoughts of Daniel’s impending departure. For the moment she
had forgotten all about the funeral. Still, she reflected, she had
no right to complain ; what had afflicted her for so many weary
months, her son’s absence, was drawing to a close ; in October
he would be back and their home life would begin anew. And
now she conjured up a picture of tranquil years ahead, for,
though she would not avow it to herself, Jerome’s death had
cleared the horizon. Henceforth she would be free, independent,
with her two children beside her.
Daniel was gazing at her with a look of anxious solicitude.
‘What are you going to do in Paris, you and Jenny, during
the next two months?’
(Being pressed for money, Madame de Fontanin had let
her house at Maisons-Laffitte for the summer season.)
Here, she thought, is the moment to tell him that I mean to
go to Austria.
298
SATURDAY, JULY 25
‘Don’t be anxious, dear. For one thing I shall be terribly
busy settling up your father’s affairs.’
‘It’s on Jenny’s account I’m so worried,’ he blurted out.
Though his sister’s morbid taciturnity was nothing new to
him, he had been struck during the last few days by Jenny’s
haggard cheeks, the feverish glitter of her eyes.
‘She’s awfully run down,’ he explained. ‘What she really
needs is an out-of-doors life.’
Madame de Fontanin replaced her cup on the tray without
replying. She, too, had noticed something unusual in her
daughter’s expression, a care-worn, haunted look for which
her father’s death was insufficient to account. But she did not
share Daniel’s views regarding Jenny.
‘There’s something sadly lacking in her,’ she sighed, adding
with touching candour: ‘She has never learnt to trust' Her
voice grew slightly formal, deferential, as was her wont when
broaching certain topics. ‘Every human soul, you know, must
have its inner conflicts, its trials. . . .’
‘Yes,’ Daniel cut her short. ‘But all the same, if Jenny could
have had some mountain air this summer or gone to the sea. . . .’
‘Neither would have done her the least good.’ Madame de
Fontanin shook her head emphatically, with the obstinacy of
all gentle souls obsessed by an unshakable belief ‘It isn’t
Jenny’s physical health that’s the trouble. Believe me, no one
can help her in any way. Each human soul must work out its
salvation alone — as it will be alone when the Last Enemy con-
fronts it at the appointed hour.’ She was thinking of Jerome’s
end, unfriended and alone, and her eyes filled with tears. After
a short silence she murmured : ‘Alone with its Maker.’
‘It’s ideas of that sort . . . ,’ Daniel began. There was a hint
of exasperation in his voice. Then he took a cigarette from his
case and fell silent.
‘Yes? “Ideas of that sort?” ’ Madame de Fontanin repeated
in a surprised tone.
She watched him close the cigarette-case with a snap and
tap the cigarette on the back of his hand before putting it to
his mouth. Exactly like his father ! The same hands, same
gestures ! The identity was all the more striking as Daniel now
299
SUMMER, 1914
wore the ring which Madame de Fontanin herself had removed
from Jerome’s finger, before she locked his hands upon eternal
rest. The massive cameo ring recalled to her, with a swift stab
of pain, those slender yet virile hands surviving henceforth only
in her memory. And at the slightest personal recall of Jerome
she could not keep her heart from thudding wildly, as it had
done when she was twenty. But, as ever, such glimpses of the
likeness between father and son caused her not only a gentle
thrill of pleasure but immense anxiety.
‘Yes? “Ideas of that sort . . . ?” ’ she repeated.
‘I only meant to say .’ He hesitated, screwing up his eyes
as he wondered how best to put it. ‘Well, it’s because of ideas
of that sort that you’ve always made a point of never interfering
in the lives of others, of letting them follow their own paths,
even when those paths were obviously wrong ones and could
only bring suffering into their lives, and into yours as well.’
Cruel as was the shock, she conjured up a smile, making as
if she had misunderstood.
‘Are you blaming me, my dear, for having allowed you too
much liberty?’
Daniel, too, smiled and, bending forward, laid his hand on
his mother’s.
‘I don’t blame you, mother dear, and I’ll never blame you
for anything — you know that quite well.’ He gazed at her
tenderly ; then his obsession got the better of him. ‘And you
know quite well, too, that I wasn’t thinking of myself when I
said that.’
A wave of indignation swept over her. ‘Really, Daniel, that’s
not nice of you !’ She was stung to the quick. ‘You never miss
a chance of speaking ill of your father; it’s most unkind.’
On that particular morning, a few hours before the funeral,
such talk was singularly ill-timed, and Daniel was conscious of
it. He was already regretting having made that remark. But his
vexation with himself for having come out with it urged him
perversely on to make things worse.
‘And you, mamma, have only one idea in your head — and
that’s to whitewash him! You shut your eyes to everything,
even the appalling difficulties in which he’s left us.’
300
SATURDAY, JULY 25
Though she had only too good reasons for sharing Daniel’s
opinion, for the moment her one desire was to shield the father’s
memory against the son’s attack.
‘Oh, Daniel, how unjust you are !’ The cry ended in a sob.
‘But then you never understood your father, the man he really
was.’ With the blind zealotry of those who plead indefensible
causes, she went on. ‘There’s nothing really serious to reproach
your father with. Nothing whatever. He was too chivalrous,
far too generous and trusting, to succeed in business. That’s
all there is against him. He let himself be led astray by scoun-
drels whom he should have kept at arm’s length. Yes, there’s
nothing worse than that — and I shall prove it. He may have
acted unwisely, with “deplorable irresponsibility,” as Mr.
Stelling called it in my hearing. But that’s the utmost that can
be laid at his door. He lacked a sense of responsibility.’
Daniel’s lips stirred and he made a slight, impatient move-
ment of his shoulders, but he did not look at his mother or
answer her. He realized that, despite their mutual love, and
however much he might desire it, any hope of speaking frankly
on this topic must be ruled out. At the first contact, their hidden
thoughts were at cross-purposes; grievances rankled even in
their silences. He stared dully at the floor, without speaking.
Madame de Fontanin, too, kept silence. Why go on with a
conversation that had taken a wrong turn from the start? She
had intended to inform her son of the criminal proceedings
that had been instituted at Vienna, so as to make Daniel
understand how necessary it was for her to go there. But her
son’s harshness had cut her so deeply as to drive out of her
head all thoughts save one: how to exculpate Jerome. And this
obviously took the cogency out of the arguments she might have
used to justify the trip to Austria. ‘It can’t be helped,’ she
thought. ‘I’ll explain it in a letter.’
For several minutes there was a constrained silence. Daniel
was gazing out of the window, his eyes fixed on the tree-tops
and the morning sky. He was puffing at a cigarette with a
simulated ease that duped his mother no more than himself
‘It’s eight,’ Madame de Fontanin murmured. She had just
heard a clock strike in the Nursing Home. Gathering up the
301
SUMMER, 1914
crumbs that had fallen in her lap, she strewed them on the
window-sill for the birds; then added in a tranquil voice:
‘I’ll go down again now.’
Daniel rose. He was heartily ashamed of himself and aehing
with remorse. As always happened when his mother’s blind
devotion to her husband forced itself upon his notice, his
enmity towards his father grew the keener. Some impulse to
which he could not give a name had always urged him to
persecute that too indulgent love.
Throwing away his cigarette, he went up to his mother with
a shy smile ; then in silence bent and kissed her, as he often did,
on her forehead, just on the margin of her prematurely white
hair. His lips knew the place well, and his nostrils the warm
scent of the skin. Tilting her head a little backwards, she
clasped his cheeks between her palms. She said nothing but,
smiUng, let her gaze sink into his, and her smile, her eyes in
which was not a glimmer of reproach, seemed to be saying:
‘Everything’s forgotten. Forgive me for being so easily put out,
and don’t feel the least remorse for having hurt me.’ He knew
that wordless speech so well that with a slow flutter of his
eyelids he signified assent. She was getting up from the chair;
he helped her to rise.
Still unspeaking, she took his arm and went down the stairs
to the basement. He opened the mortuary door for her and she
entered alone.
As she went in, the perfume of the roses wilting on the coffin
came to her, borne on a waft of cool, cloistered air.
Jenny was sitting beside the coffin, motionless, her hands
resting on her knees. Madame de Fontanin went back to her
seat beside her daughter. She took her Bible from her little
hand-bag, which was hanging on the back of the chair, and
opened it at random. (Truth to tell, though she deemed it at
random, the well-thumbed, broken-backed old volume invari-
ably opened at one or other of the passages, her favourites,
to which she oftenest turned.) She began reading.
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not
one. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his
302
SATURDAY, JULY 25
months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that
he cannot pass.
Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accom-
plish, as an hireling, his day.
She raised her eyes, meditated for a while, then laid the
book on her lap. Her reverent way of handling, opening and
closing her Bible was in itself a rite of piety and gratitude.
She had wholly regained her peace of mind.
10
Saturday^ July 25
JACQUES ATTENDS JEROME’s FUNERAL
O N the previous evening, after watching Jaures enter a taxi
and drive away into the darkness, Jacques had joined a group
of socialists with a propensity for late hours who often saw the
night through at the Chope tavern. The private room reserved
for members of the Party had a special entrance from the
courtyard, and was thus available after the public bar had
closed. The talk had been so animated and gone on so late that
Jacques had not left the premises till three. Lacking the energy
at this belated hour to trudge back to his lodgings at the Place
Maubert, he had turned into a small, shabby hotel near the
Bourse. No sooner did his cheek touch the pillow than he fell
into a heavy sleep which even the early morning hubbub of
this crowded quarter of the city failed to disturb.
It was broad daylight when he awoke.
After a hasty wash he went downstairs, bought the morning
papers and hurried to the terrace of a cafe on the Boulevards
to study them.
At long last the Press thought fit to sound a warning note.
303
SUMMER, 1914
The Caillaux case was relegated to the second page and
thick headlines in every paper proclaimed the gravity of the
situation, describing the Austrian Note as an ultimatum and
the line being taken by Austria as one of bare-faced provoca-
tion. Even the Figaro, which for the last week had been devoting
all its columns to a full-length verbatim report of the Caillaux
trial, now flaunted on its front sheet an inch-high headline :
THE AUSTRIAN MENACE, and a whole page dealt with
the European crisis under the caption Is it War? The semi-
official Matin took a definitely warlike tone. ‘The Austro-
Servian controversy was one of the subjects discussed during
the President’s stay in Russia. The Dual Alliance will not be
caught unawares.’ Clemenceau in his paper, VHomme Libre,
wrote: ‘Never since 1870 has Europe been so near the brink
of war, a war the scope of which it is impossible to foresee.’
Describing von Schoen’s visit to the Quai d’Orsay, the Echo de
Paris spoke of ‘a threat from Germany following on the heels
of Austria’s peremptory demands,’ and a late edition warned
its readers war might be declared overnight if Servia did
not yield.
Naturally only a war between Austria and Servia was con-
templated for the moment. But what assurance was there that
the conflagration could be kept from spreading? Jaures in his
leading article made no secret of the fact that the last hope of
peace lay in the humiliation of Servia, an inglorious surrender
to Austria’s demands. Extracts from the foreign Press showed
that opinion in other countries was equally pessimistic.
On that morning of July 25, barely twelve hours before the
expiry of the time-limit granted Servia, all Europe — as foretold
by the Austrian General whose ominous remark Jacques had
culled at Vienna a fortnight earlier — had a rude awakening.
Pushing aside the newspapers littering the table, he drank
his coffee; it had gone cold. True, he had learned nothing he
did not know already, but somehow, stated thus in print, this
worldwide consternation took on a new, appalling actuality.
In a mood of profound dejection he watched the daily crowd
of workmen and employees alighting from their buses and
hurrying away to their work. There was an unwonted earnest-
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
ness on their faces and each was carrying an open newspaper.
For a moment his courage failed him; the burden of his lone-
liness seemed past enduring. Then suddenly a thought crossed
his mind — of Jenny, Daniel, the funeral taking place that
morning.
Hastily rising, he set off in the direction of Montmartre. It
had struck him that he might look in at Le Libertaire. He was
eager to be back again in an atmosphere of combat.
In the Rue d’Orsel, even at this early hour, a small group
had collected in quest of news. Newspapers of the ‘advanced’
persuasion were being passed from hand to hand. The front
page of the Bonnet Rouge was devoted to the Russian strikes.
For most revolutionaries the serious nature of the labour unrest
at St. Petersburg was one of the best guarantees of Russian
neutrality — in other words, the restriction of hostilities to the
Balkans. All those connected with Le Libertaire were at one in
condemning the remissness of the Socialist International and
accusing the leaders of ‘playing up’ to their respective govern-
ments. Now, if ever, was surely the moment to deal a vigorous
blow, to foment strikes in other countries by every possible
means, so as to paralyse all the High Commands of Europe
simultaneously. Now was the ideal opportunity for a mass
uprising that might well not only dispel the threat of war but
bring the revolution many years nearer.
Jacques listened to their talk, but was chary of expressing
his own opinion. In his view the Russian strikes were a double-
edged weapon. They might indeed checkmate the warlike
activities of the High Command ; but they might also furnish
a government in a tight corner with a pretext for taking
drastic measures. Under colour of the danger of war, martial
law might be proclaimed and the revolutionary movement
violently cut short by stern repressive action.
The clock pointed to eleven precisely when he was back
again at the Place Pigalle. ‘Now what was it I had to do this
morning at eleven?’ he suddenly asked himself Nothing came.
‘Eleven, Saturday?’ Anxiously he racked his brains to re-
member. ‘Was it the Fontanin funeral?’ But surely he’d never
had the least intention of attending it. . . .
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SUMMER, 1914
He walked on, his eyes bent on the ground, puzzled what to
do. ‘Fm hardly presentable,’ he mused. ‘Not even shaved !
Still, in the crowd I wouldn’t be noticed. Of course the ceme-
tery’s quite near; I could drop in at a barber’s — a matter of
five minutes. I could just shake hands with Daniel ; it’s only
the decent thing to do. The decent thing, and it wouldn’t
commit me in any way. . . .’
Already his eyes were hunting for a barber’s shop sign.
When he reached the cemetery the caretaker told him the
funeral service had already begun, and showed him the direc-
tion to take. Soon he had a glimpse across the gravestones of a
group in front of a small family vault inscribed : de fontanin.
He recognized Pastor Gregory and Daniel ; they had their backs
to him.
The Pastor’s raucous voice rose through the silence.
‘The Lord said unto Moses : I will be with thee. And fear not,
poor sinner, when you are walking in the Valley of the Shadow,
God will be with you, too.’
Jacques made a circuit of the group so as to have a front view
of the mourners. Uncovered, with the full light falling on his
brows, Daniel’s head dominated all the others. Three heavily
veiled women were beside him. The one in front was obviously
Madame de Fontanin; which of the other two was Jenny there
was no knowing.
His arm uplifted in a comminating gesture, his eyes fana-
tically aflame, the Pastor was apostrophizing the deal coffin
laid on the threshold of the vault under the garish light.
‘Poor, miserable sinner, whose sun went down before the
shut of day ! But, nay, we shall not weep over you as we weep
for men without hope. You have left the region of things seen,
yet what is lost to our material eyes is but the fleeting form of
your vile body. This day you have put on the shining armour
of Christ, called to your Master’s side in His most glorious
service. You have entered before us into the joy of our Lord.
And I bid you, my brethren, praying at my side to-day,
possess your souls in patience. For that happy release is drawing
near to all of us. Father, into Thy hands I commend our
^506
SATURDAY, JULY 25
The attendants lifted the coffin, slung it above the tomb and
paying out the ropes,’ gently lowered it into the darkness.
Leaning on Daniel’s arm, Madame de Fontanin gazed down
into the yawning hole. . . . (That must be Jenny behind her,
Jacques thought, next to Nicole Hequet). . . . Presently, guided
by one of the undertaker’s staff, the three women slowly made
their way to a mourning carriage waiting in the cemetery
avenue ; it moved away at once, at walking pace.
Daniel was standing by himself at the end of the pathway
leading to the grave, his gleaming helmet tucked under his
arm. He was looking his imposing best; slim, tall, graceful and,
if as usual a shade punctilious in his gestures, perfectly at ease,
he was receiving the condolences of the family friends who were
filing past him slowly, one by one.
Jacques watched him, and that mere distant glimpse was
enough to fan the ashes of his early ardour into a gentle glow
of warm affection.
Daniel noticed him and, as he shook his hand, gazed at him
with fond surprise.
‘Thank you for coming, Jacques.’ Then, hesitantly, he
added: ‘I’m leaving to-night. I’d awfully like to see you again
before I go.’
The sight of Daniel had brought to Jacques’ mind the
imminence of war, of fighting on the frontier, the war’s first
victims. . . .
‘Have you seen the papers to-day?’ he asked.
Daniel stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘The papers? No. Why?’ Then, doing his best not to sound
too insistent, he said : ‘Won’t you come to see me off at the
Gare de I’Est to-night and say good-bye?’
‘What time?’
Daniel’s face lit up.
‘The train leaves at nine-thirty. Shall we meet at the buffet
at nine?’
‘I’ll be there.’
They gazed at each other for a moment before shaking hands.
Then, ‘Thanks,’ Daniel said in a low voice.
Jacques walked away without once looking back.
307
SUMMER, 1914
II
Saturday^ July 2^
JACQUES LUNCHES WITH ANTOINE
Several times in the course of the morning Jacques had
wondered what reactions the turn for the worse in the political
crisis might be producing on Antoine. He had vaguely hoped
to meet his brother at the funeral.
After a hasty lunch he made his way to the Rue de
rUniversite.
‘The Doctor hasn’t finished luncheon, sir,’ said Leon as he
led Jacques to the dining-room. ‘But I’ve just served the
dessert.’
To his annoyance Jacques found that Isaac Studler, Jousselin
and young Roy were there as well; he did not know that they
lunched every day with Antoine. It was a custom Antoine
had established, as being the best way of keeping in daily touch
with his assistants, since his mornings were taken up with
hospital work and the afternoons with his private practice. And
for the other three men, bachelors all, this arrangement meant
not only a saving of time but also of an appreciable daily outlay.
‘You’ll have lunch with us, won’t you?’ Antoine said.
‘Thanks, I’ve had my lunch.’
Jacques walked round the big table shaking the hands
extended to him. As he sat down he threw out a seeming
casual question :
‘Seen to-day’s papers?’
Antoine gazed at his brother for a moment before answering,
and his look seemed to say : ‘Perhaps you were right after all.’
‘Yes,’ he said aloud in a thoughtful tone. ‘We’ve all of us
read the papers.’
‘Since we started lunch we’ve been talking of nothing else,’
Studler confessed, stroking his black beard.
was careful not to betray unduly his anxiety. All
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
the morning a rankling irritation had been preying on his mind.
For he set store on feeling himself surrounded by a stable,
smoothly running social system, much as he needed a smoothly
running home where each material problem was solved for
him in an efficient manner and without his intervention, by
a reliable domestic staff. He was quite prepared to put up with
minor defects in the system, to overlook occasional scandals
in high places — much as he shut his eyes to Leon’s wasteful
habits and Clotilde’s petty pilferings. But he considered that
in no event should the destinies of France give him more
anxiety than did the proper functioning of his pantry or
kitchen. And it went against the grain that political embroil-
ments should threaten to disturb his working programme, force
their tempestuous way into his life.
‘I don’t consider,’ he said, ‘that there’s occasion for any
great alarm. It’s not the first war-scare we’ve had. Still I don’t
deny that this morning’s papers strike a rather disagreeable
note. There’s too much — how shall I put it? — sabre-rattling
for my taste.’
At the last words Manuel Roy looked up at Antoine ; in the
boyish face the dark eyes glowed.
‘A sabre-rattling. Chief, that’ll be heard across our frontiers.
And which, unless I’m much mistaken, will give pause to some
of our too greedy neighbours.’
Jousselin, who had been bending over his plate, looked
quickly up at the young man. Then he returned to the task of
methodically peeling a peach impaled on his fork with the
tip of his fruit-knife.
‘Nothing’s less certain,’ Studler remarked.
‘Still, it may very well have that effect,’ Antoine suggested.
‘And perhaps it was necessary.’
‘I wonder!’ Studler sounded dubious. ‘It’s a damned risky
game to play, intimidation ! It infuriates the enemy quite as
often as it checks him. Yes, I’m much more inclined to think
the Government is making a vast blunder by making the welkin
ring with their “sabre-rattling” as you call it!’
‘Well, we can hardly put ourselves in the place of the men
who’re in command,’ Antoine sagely remarked.
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SUMMER, 1914
‘What I ask above all of the men who’re in command,’
Studler retorted, ‘is for them to act prudently. To take an
aggressive line at all is an imprudent thing to do. And to make
people think that circumstances compel them to take that line
is equally imprudent. Nothing could be deadlier to the cause
of peace than to get the idea rooted in the public mind that
we’re threatened by a war. Or even that there’s the possibility
of a war.’
Jacques kept silence.
‘Personally,’ Antoine said, without looking at his brother,
‘I can quite understand how a leading statesman — even if as a
private citizen he disapproves of war — may be led to take
certain aggressive steps. If only for the simple reason that he
holds a post of responsibility. A man who has been given the
reins of power, whose duty it is to watch over the safety of his
country, may well, if he has any sense of realities and if the
attitude of a neighbouring State strikes him as a real menace . . .’
‘Not to mention the fact,’ Roy broke in, ‘that one simply
can’t conceive of a statesman worth his salt who’d let his
sentimental prejudices run away with him — to the point of
avoiding a war at all costs. When a man’s at the head of a
country that has a place on the map, a great nation with an
empire overseas, he’s got to think realistically. The most
pacifist of our Prime Ministers, once he’s in the saddle, is
bound to discover pretty quickly that a country can’t keep its
wealth and guard its territories from the greed of neighbours
unless it has a strong army, an army that compels respect and
now and again “rattles the sabre” — if only to remind the rest
of the world that it exists.’
‘ “To keep its wealth,” ’ Jacques mused. ‘The cat’s out of the
bag ! To safeguard one’s own possessions and, on occasion, grab
a neighbour’s. That’s the whole creed of the capitalists —
nations and individuals alike. The individual fights to snatch
a profit, the nation to annex new markets, territory, sea-
ports. As if ruthless competition were the only rule of human
conduct !’
‘Unhappily,’ Studler said, ‘whatever turn things take to-
morrow, those sabre-rattling antics of yours may well have the
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
most deplorable effects on French policy, foreign and domestic
as well.’
As he spoke, he turned towards Jacques, as though inviting
his opinion. In the mild eyes there was a languid, disconcerting
lustre that made it almost painful to face them squarely.
Jousselin looked up again, gazed at Studler, then swept the
others with his gaze. He was fair-skinned and the finely cut
features had an engaging gentleness. His mouth was wide,
delicately moulded, always hovering on a smile; the nose was
aquiline, rather long and melancholy, and there was a curious
glint in the elongated, mist-grey eyes.
‘That’s all very well,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘But you all
seem too inclined to overlook the fact that nobody wants a war.
Nobody!’
‘Are you so sure of that?’ asked Studler.
‘I dare say,’ Antoine conceded, ‘there are a few old fire-
eaters who’d welcome one.’
‘Pernicious old fire-eaters,’ Studler exclaimed, ‘who dodder
away in fine, heroic phrases and know very well that, if war
came, they could still dodder away to their hearts’ content,
well behind the firing line, without risking their precious skins I’
‘The danger is,’ Jacques put in with a cautiousness that was
not lost on Antoine, ‘that almost everywhere in Europe it’s
those same old men who hold the reins of power.’
Roy turned to Studler with a laugh.
‘Why, here’s an opening for you. Caliph, who’re so keen on
new ideas! You might launch that scheme of yours, as a pre-
ventive measure: in the event of mobilization, all the oldest
contingents to be called up first, and all the veterans to be
dumped in the front line.’
‘It wouldn’t be such a bad idea,’ Studler grunted.
There was a short silence while Leon served the coffee.
‘There’s one way and only one,’ Studler continued in a
gloomy voice, ‘of almost certainly preventing wars. It’s a
drastic measure, but perfectly feasible in Europe.’
‘Meaning?’
‘To insist on a general referendum, to leave it to the nation
to decide.’
3 ”
SUMMER, 1914'
Jacques alone gave an approving nod.
Encouraged, Studler amplified his view.
‘Isn’t it illogical, isn’t it preposterous, that in these days of
democracy and universal franchise the power of declaring war
should be left to a few men, a government? Jousselin says,
“Nobody wants a war.” Surely no government in any country
should have the right to embark on a war — even a defensive
war — against the will of the majority of its electors. When it’s
a question of life and death for a nation, the least one can say
is that the nation itself should be consulted. That ought to be
a sine qua non'
Whenever he became excited the wings of his hook-nose
began to flutter, dark blotches mottled his cheeks, and his big
equine eyes grew slightly bloodshot.
‘There’s nothing utopian in all that,’ he added. ‘All that’s
needed is for every nation to force its government to add a
short amendment to its constitution. “Orders for a general
mobilization shall not be passed, and no war shall be declared,
unless and until a plebiscite has been held and a clear majority
of 75 per cent has voted in favour of such measures.” Think it
over! That’s the only legal and practically certain way of
putting an end to war. In times of peace — we’ve seen it in
France — a man with jingoistic views may on occasion find a
majority to vote for his election; there are always hotheads
who delight in playing with fire. But if, when there’s talk of
mobilization, that man was compelled to .sound the opinions
of those who put him into power, he wouldn’t find anyone
willing to confer on him the right of declaring war.’
Roy gave a little soundless laugh.
Antoine, who had risen, tapped his shoulder.
‘Give me a light, Manuel, old chap. Now let’s hear your
views about all that. What would your paper have to say to it?’
The young man looked up at Antoine; his eyes had the
docility of an attentive pupil, but he was laughing still with a
faint air of bravado.
Antoine turned to Jacques. ‘Manuel, I may tell you, is a
fervent reader of the Action Frangaise.'
‘I read it too, every day,’ Jacques said, gazing at the young
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
doctor, who returned his scrutiny. ‘They’re an exceptionally
intelligent lot, the men who write for it, with really logical
minds. One seldom detects a flaw in their arguments. The
trouble is — to my mind, anyhow — they almost always start
from the wrong premisses.’
‘Really now?’ Roy drawled.
He had still his jaunty, rather supercilious smile, as if it
were an effort, bringing himself to speak of subjects which he
had at heart with the unenlightened. He reminded Jacques
of a child wanting to keep a secret. In his eyes, however,
sparkled now and then a light of truculence. Then, as if
Jacques’ criticism had stung him out of his reserve, he took a
step towards Antoine and blurted out.
‘Personally, C'hief, I must say, this everlasting Franco-
German tension’s getting on my nerves. It’s been poisoning
our lives for the last forty years, ours and our fathers’. And
we’ve had enough of it ! If a war’s the only way of ending it,
let’s have a war and get it over. Things are bound to come to
that sooner or later. What’s the good of waiting, postponing
the inevitable?’
‘Let’s go on postponing it,’ Antoine smiled. ‘A war indefin-
itely postponed’s uncommonly like peace !’
‘Well, personally. I’d rather have done with it once for all.
For this much anyhow is certain : after a war, whether we win
(as seems more probable) or whether we lose, the matter will
be definitely settled in one way or another, and we’ll hear no
more about the “Franco-German problem.’’ Not to mention’ —
his face grew earnest — ‘that in the pass we’ve come to, a good
blood-letting might do wonders for us. Forty fat years of
stagnant peace are bound to tell on the morale of a nation.
And if the spiritual integrity of France is only to be recovered
at the cost of a war, well, thank heavens there’s some of us
will pay the cost without haggling over their precious lives.’
There was not a trace of braggadocio in Roy’s tone, nor was
there any doubting his sincerity. All present were conscious
of this — and that they had before them a man of firm convic-
tions, ready to give up his life for the cause that he believed in.
Antoine had heard him out, standing, his cigarette between
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SUMMER, 1914
his lips, his eyebrows puckered. He said nothing, but his eyes
lingered on the young man in a look of grave affection, tinged
with sadness. Courage always appealed to him. For some
moments he gazed at the smouldering tip of his cigarette.
Jousselin had gone up to Studler; with his forefinger, the
nail of which was yellow, eaten away by acids, he tapped the
Caliph on the chest.
‘There you are ! We always come back to Minkovsky’s classi-
fication — into “syntonous” and “schizoid” types : men who take
life as it is, and men who turn their backs on it.’
Roy burst out laughing.
‘I’m a “syntonous” type, I suppose?’
‘Yes, and the Caliph’s “schizoid” ; and neither of you will
ever change.’
Antoine glanced at his watch and turned to Jacques.
‘Come to my den for a minute or two, “Schizoid,” ’ he smiled,
‘if you’re not in too much of a hurry.’
Opening the door of his little study, he stood aside to let
his brother pass.
‘I’m very fond of young Roy,’ he said. ‘He’s such a decent,
healthy-minded youngster. And straight as a die. A bit narrow
in his ideas, of course,’ he added hastily, as Jacques made no
response. ‘Sit down. Have a cigarette. I expect he got on your
nerves a bit. One’s got to know him to understand him. He has
the typical mentality of the man who’s keen on games; he
never beats about the bush, he faces up to facts, cheerfully,
courageously. He has no use for subtleties of thought — not that
he lacks the critical faculty, in his work at any rate. But in-
stinctively he brushes all doubts aside, for uncertainty holds a
man up. Perhaps he’s right. His view is that life shouldn’t be
spent in juggling with ideas. He never asks, “What’s a man to
think?” but “What’s a man to do? How can he make himself
most useful?” I’m riot blind to his failings, but they’re mostly
the faults of youth. They’ll pass. Did you notice his voice?
Sometimes it breaks, goes shrill like a schoolboy’s; then he
forces it down and talks in deep tones like an adult.’
Jacques, who had settled into a chair, was unconvinced by
his brother’s eulogy of Roy.
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
‘I prefer the other two,’ he confessed. ‘Jousselin especially
seems quite a nice fellow.’
‘Jousselin,’ Antoine laughed, ‘is a chap who always has one
foot in wonderland. The typical inventor’s mentality, I imagine.
He has spent his life dreaming of things that lie just on the inside
edge of the impossible, in that semi-real world where minds
like his sometimes make real discoveries. And he has made
some, confound him! Really important ones, what’s more.
I’ll tell you about them when we’ve more time. Roy’s very
funny when he talks about him. “Jousselin,” he once said to me,
“is a chap who insists on seeing none but three-legged calves.
One day he’ll deign to observe an ordinary calf and then he’ll
fancy he has made a wonderful discovery, and go round
telling everyone, ‘Would you believe it, there are calves with
four legs, too !””
He stretched himself full length on the sofa, locking his
hands behind his head.
‘As you see. I’ve got together a pretty good team. All three
men are very different and each supplies what the others lack.
You’d met the Caliph before, hadn’t you? He’s immensely
useful to me ; the amount of work he can put in is simply amaz-
ing. And the fellow has brains, marvellous brains. I might
almost say his brain-power is the most striking thing about him.
It’s at once his strength and his limitation. He understands
everything without an effort. And each new thing he learns is
neatly docketed for reference in his brain — it’s as if he had the
pigeon-holes all ready in advance. With the result that there’s
never the least untidiness in that big head of his. Yet somehow
I’ve always felt there’s something queer, outlandish, about
him — one can’t quite say what it is — due to his race, I suppose. I
don’t know how to put it, but his ideas never seem to come out
of himself, to be really part and parcel of his personality. It’s
very odd. He doesn’t use his brain as a natural organ belonging
to himself, but like a tool — a tool that comes from outside, that
somebody has lent him.’
While speaking, he had glanced at the clock ; now lazily he
swung his legs off the sofa.
Still, Jacques mused, he must have read the papers ! Doesn’t
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SUMMER, 1914
he realize the threat that’s hanging over all of us? Or does he
rattle on like that just to avoid discussing it?
‘Which way are you going?’ Antoine asked, as he got up.
‘Can I drop you somewhere with the car? I’m going to the
Quai d’Orsay, to the Foreign Office.’
‘Really?’ Jacques was taken aback and made no effort to
conceal his surprise.
‘I’ve got to see Rumelles,’ Antoine explained at once. ‘Oh,
not to talk politics ; I’m giving him an injection every two days.
Usually he comes here, but he rang up to let me know he was so
overwhelmed with work that he couldn’t leave his office.’
‘What does he think of the present state of affairs?’ Jacques
ventured to ask.
‘Haven’t a notion. I thought of asking him about it. Come
back this evening and I’ll tell you. No, you’d better come with
me; it’ll only take ten minutes and you can wait for me in
the car.’
Tempted, Jacques pondered for a moment, then nodded.
Before leaving, Antoine went to his desk and locked the
drawers.
‘Do you know what I did just now when I came home?’ he
asked in a low voice. ‘I hunted up my military service-book
to see my duties in the event of mobilization.’ He did not smile.
Then in a calm voice he added : ‘I’m to join up at Compiegne
— on the first day.’
Silently the two brothers gazed into each other’s eyes. Then
after a moment, Jacques said gravely :
‘And I’ve no doubt that, all over Europe, thousands of other
fellows did exactly the same thing.’
‘Poor old Rumelles !’ Antoine remarked as they went down
the stairs together. ‘He was terribly run down after this last
winter and was due to go on leave about now. But Berthelot’s
asked him to chuck his leave — on account of* all this to-do most
likely. So he came and asked me to do something to help him
to stick it out. I’ve started a treatment, and I hope to put
him right.’
The words were lost on Jacques. His mind was too full of the
discovery that, for some cause he could not fathom, all his old
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
affection for his brother had come back to-day — warm and
deep as ever, yet exacting and dissatisfied.
‘Oh, Antoine,’ he cried impulsively, ‘if only you knew them
better, the humble folk, the workers of the world, how . . . how
different you’d be !’ His tone implied : ‘How much better as a
man you’d be — and how much nearer we should be to one
another! If only — if only it were possible for me to love you!’
Antoine, who was walking in front, turned on Jacques
indignantly.
‘Do you imagine I don’t know them, after fifteen years of
hospital work? Don’t forget that for three hours each morning
day after day I’ve been seeing factory workers, people from
the industrial suburbs, all sorts and conditions of men. And, as
a doctor, it’s the real man I see, the man whom suffering has
stripped bare of all pretences. Can you affirm that sort of
experience isn’t as instructive as yours?’
No, Jacques thought obstinately, morosely. No, it isn’t the
same thing !
When twenty minutes later Antoine left the Ministry and
came back to his car, his look was anxious.
‘They’re in a fearful stew in there,’ he muttered. ‘Cables
are pouring in from all the embassies, people rushing hell-for-
leather between the various departments. Everyone’s very
apprehensive about the tone of the reply that Servia’s due to
send this evening.’ Without heeding his brother’s questioning
look, he asked : ‘Where are you going now?’
‘To the Humamte,' was on the tip of Jacques’ tongue, but
all he said was ‘To a place near the Bourse.’
‘I can’t drive you there, it would get me late. But, if you
like. I’ll drop you at the Place de I’Opera.’
No sooner was Antoine seated than he began speaking again.
‘Rumelles looked worried. This morning, I gathered, all the
Foreign Office staff were staking high hopes on a semi-official
communication from the German Embassy declaring that the
Austrian note was not an ultimatum but only a “demand for
an immediate reply.” That, it seems, conveyed in diplomatic
jargon several interesting facts: first, that Germany was making
serious efforts to tone down the effects of Austria’s high-
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SUMMER, 1914
handed gesture; secondly, that Austria would not refuse to
parley with Servia.’
‘So we’ve come to that!’ Jacques exclaimed. ‘They’re staking
their last hopes on verbal quibbles of that sort !’
‘Also, as this morning Servia seemed ready to give in all
along the line, almost without protest, there were good grounds
for hope.’
‘And then — ?’ Jacques asked impatiently.
‘Then, later on, news came that Servia was mobilizing three-
hundred thousand men and that, Belgrade being dangerously
near the frontier, the Servian government was preparing to
move from the capital to-night, to a safer place in the interior
of the country. Which makes it look as if the Servian reply won’t
be the hoped-for capitulation and that Servia has reasons for
expecting to be suddenly attacked.’
‘What about France? Does France propose to do anything
about it, take some sort of initiative?’
‘Rumelles, naturally enough, is guarded, but from what I
could gather the opinion prevailing amongst the members of
the Government is that we’ve got to show ourselves very firm
— if necessary, speed up quite openly our preparations for war.’
‘I see. The usual policy of bluff!’
‘Rumelles says — and one has the feeling that he’s repeating
what he’s been told to say : “Considering the pass things have
come to, the only way for France and Russia to curb the Central
Powers is to show that they’re prepared to face the worst.”
And he said this, too ; “If either of us flinches, it means war.” ’
‘And, of course, all of them have the idea in the back of
their minds that, supposing our threats don’t take effect, and
if war should break out, anyhow our preparations will give us
a start over the others.’
‘Certainly. And, in my opinion, that’s a sound argument.’
‘But don’t you see,’ Jacques cried, ‘the Central Powers are
bound to argue in the same way! And then — ? Yes, Studler’s
right ; these sabre-rattling tactics are the riskiest of all.’
‘We’ve got to leave such matters to the experts,’ Antoine cut
in fretfully. ‘They must know better than we do what’s the
wisest line to take.’
318
SATURDAY, JULY 25
Jacques merely shrugged his shoulders.
They were nearing the Opera.
‘When shall I see you again?’ Antoine asked. ‘Will you be
staying on in Paris?’
‘I really don’t know.’
Jacques was stepping out of the car when Antoine touched
him on the arm.
‘By the way . . .’ He paused, to choose his words. ‘You
know — or you don't know — that every other Sunday afternoon
a few friends gather at my place. To-morrow Rumelles is to
come at three for his injection and he’s promised to join us
afterwards, for a short time anyhow. If you’d like to meet him.
I’ll be delighted if you’ll come. Under the present circum-
stances what he has to say may be . . . instructive.’
‘To-morrow at three?’ Jacques said in a non-committal tone.
‘Well yes, perhaps. I’ll do my best. Thanks.’
12
Saturday, July
JACqUES SEES DANIEL OFF AT THE GARE DE l’eST
A T the Humanite office nothing more was known than what
Antoine had passed on to Jacques after his talk with Rumelles.
Jaur^s had left for twenty-four hours’ electioneering in the
Rhone Department, where his friend Marius Moutet was
standing for Parliament. Though the Skipper’s absence at
such a critical hour had an unsettling effect on the editorial
staff, the atmosphere was optimistic rather than otherwise,
and they were awaiting the reply to the ultimatum without
undue anxiety. The impression was that Servia, under pressure
319
SUMMER, 19x4
from the Powers, would adopt a tone conciliatory enough to
deprive Austria of the least pretext for taking umbrage.
High hopes were founded, above all, on the repeated assur-
ances given by the German Socialist Party; it seemed that,
faced by a common danger, French and German socialists
had at last achieved whole-hearted unity. Moreover, most
encouraging reports of the spread of the international pacifist
movement were steadily pouring in. Demonstrations against
the threat of war were growing more and more impressive in
every country. Socialist groups throughout Europe were
actively conferring with a view to taking concerted, drastic
action ; the notion of launching a general strike, as a practical
deterrent, seemed to be gaining ground everywhere.
As he was leaving Stefany’s office, Jacques met Mourlan,
who had come in quest of news. After a few general remarks
about the situation, the veteran revolutionary shepherded
Jacques into a corner of the room.
‘Where are you dossing, boy? Have you heard that just now
the cops are nosing round in all the lodging-houses? Old
Gervais has had trouble with them. So’s Crabol.’
Jacques knew that the keeper of the lodging-house where he
was staying, on the Quai de la Tournelle, was on the police
list of suspects. Though his identity papers were in order he
had no wish to come in contact with the police.
‘Take my tip,’ Mourlan advised him. ‘Don’t waste any time.
Clear out this evening.’
That could easily be done. It had just struck half-past seven
and his meeting with Daniel was not till nine. The problem
was where to move to.
Mourlan had an inspiration. One of the E tender d group, a
commercial traveller, was leaving for a week. He rented a room
by the year on the top floor of a house near the Halles, facing
the porch of Saint Eustache’ Church. It was a quiet place, and
most unlikely to figure on the police registers.
‘Let’s step round and see,’ Mourlan suggested. ‘It’s quite near.’
The comrade was at home and the matter was settled at
once. Less than an hour later Jacques had transferred his
scanty belongings to his new abode.
320
SATURDAY, JULY 25
The station clock pointed to a few minutes after nine when
he reached the Gare de I’Est. Daniel was waiting on the plat-
form at the entrance to the bulTet. As soon as he caught sight of
Jacques he went up to him, looking uncomfortable.
‘Jenny’s here,’ he said at once.
A flush rose to Jacques’ face. His lips parted on an almost
soundless ‘Ah . . . !’ and for a moment all sorts of contradictory
plans raced through his head. He looked away, to conceal
his discomfiture.
Daniel supposed he was looking round for Jenny.
‘She’s on the platform,’ he explained. ‘She insisted on seeing
me off.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘It would have been unkind
to tell her about our appointment; she wouldn’t have dared
to come. So I only mentioned it just now.’
Jacques had regained his composure. ‘Well, I must be going
anyhow,’ he said briskly. ‘I only came to say good-bye.’ He
smiled. ‘And now that’s done, I’m off!’
‘No, please don’t go!’ Daniel cried. ‘I’ve heaps of things
to say.’ Suddenly he added: ‘I’ve been reading the papers.’
Jacques looked up, made no comment.
‘Tell me, Jacques,’ Daniel asked. ‘If there was a war, what
would do?’
‘What would I do?’ He made a gesture seeming to imply :
‘That would take too long explaining.’ Then, after some
moments’ silence, he said, putting all the fervour of his hope
into his voice: ‘But there won’t be a war.’
Daniel was watching him attentively.
‘I can’t acquaint you with all the plans that arc on foot,’
Jacques went on. ‘But you can take my word for it — I know
what Tm talking about. Already, throughout the working-class
of Europe there’s been such a wave of indignation and the
forces of socialism have been mobilized so effectively, that no
government can any longer feel sure enough of its hold on
them to embark upon a war.’
‘Is that so?’ Daniel sounded frankly incredulous.
Jacques closed his eyes for a moment. Suddenly, as on a
diagram, the situation in its entirety took form across the twi-
light of his mind. He saw two clean-cut, contradictory lines of
321
M
SUMMER, 1914
force: the left-wing parties at daggers drawn with all existing
governments, doing their utmost to stir up the masses to revolt ;
on the right were the reformists, who, believing that diplomacy
could find a way out, were doing their best to co-operate with
their governments. And all at once he was afraid, a sickening
doubt came over him. But then he opened his eyes again and,
with a conviction that impressed Daniel despite himself,
repeated :
‘Yes. You’ve no idea, I suppose, of the driving force behind
the Workers’ International as it is to-day. Everything’s pro-
vided for. All is set for an obstinate resistance— everywhere : in
France, in Germany, in Belgium and Italy. The least attempt
to start a war would be the signal for a world-wide revolution.’
‘Which might, perhaps, be even more terrible than a war,’
Daniel suggested.
A shadow fell on Jacques’ face, and he did not answer for
a while.
‘I’ve never been in favour of violence,’ he admitted. ‘Still
if it came to a choice between a world war and a rebellion that
would prevent it, how could one hesitate? If some thousands
have to die on the barricades to spare the world a futile
massacre of millions, there are a good many socialists in Europe
who would feel no more qualms than I do.’
Then he wondered what Jenny was doing. If her brother
lingered here too long, she would come to fetch him.
‘Jacques,’ Daniel suddenly exclaimed. ‘I want you to promise
me . . .’ His courage failed him to continue. ‘I’m terribly
afraid for you,’ he ended lamely.
Jacques thought: ‘He’s in a hundred times greater danger
than I am, and not for a moment does he think about himself.’
He was greatly moved. Forcing a smile on to his lips, he said :
‘But I tell you, there won’t be a war. Still we may very well
come within an ace of it, and I hope the nations will take the
lesson to heart, this time. We’ll talk all that over one day, if
you like. Now I’m off. Au revoir.’
‘No. Don’t go yet. Why should you?’
Jacques made a vague gesture towards the platform. ‘You’re-
. . . keeping her waiting.’
322
SATURDAY, JULY 25
‘Anyhow you might see me into my carriage,’ Daniel said
sadly. ‘And say a word to Jenny.’
A tremor sped down Jacques’ spine. Taken unawares, he
stared blankly at his friend.
‘Come along!’ Daniel clutched his arm affectionately. ‘I’ve
taken a platform-ticket for you.’
Jacques thought: ‘I’m a fool, giving in to him like this I I
ought to put my foot down, to go away.’ Nevertheless, deep
down in him, a soft, insidious voice urged him to follow Daniel.
The booking-hall seethed with passengers, soldiers, luggage
trolleys. It was a Saturday night and, for many, the beginning
of their summer holiday. Jacques and Daniel threaded their
way between vociferating, laughing groups surging round the
booking-offices. As they approached the platform entrances,
the air grew darker. Smoke-clouds swirled under the huge
glass roof, people were scurrying in all directions, the tumult
was deafening.
‘Mind, not a word about the war in Jenny’s presence!’
Daniel shouted in Jacques’ ear.
She had observed them approaching from the far end of the
platform, and hastily turned away, making as if she had not
seen them. But she could feel their coming, and her throat
grew parched, the muscles of her neck tautened. When her
brother tapped her shoulder, somehow she brought herself to
turn with a look of feigned surprise. Daniel was startled to see
her face so white, but put it down to fatigue and the emotion
of their parting; also perhaps the contrast between her face
and the black dress.
Without looking at Jacques, she greeted him with a distant
nod and, as her brother was present, dared not refrain from
holding out her hand as well.
‘I’ll leave you two together,’ she said in a shaky voice.
‘No, No!’ Jacques exclaimed at once, ‘I’ll go instead ... I
mean. I’ve got to be off. I’ve an appointment at ten — at the
other end of Paris.’
Under a compartment beside them a steam-pipe began
hissing so shrilly that they could not hear each other speak; a
cloud of vapour billowed round them.
323
SUMMER, 1914
‘Well, good-bye, old chap.’ Jacques touched his friend’s
arm.
Daniel’s lips moved, but Jacques could not catch the words,
if any. A wan, wry smile screwed up one corner of his mouth ;
in the shadow of the helmet his eyes glowed strangely, des-
perately, fever-bright. He squeezed Jacques’ fingers with both
hands. Then, of a sudden, bending, he put his arm awkwardly
round his friend’s shoulders and kissed him — for the first time
in their lives.
^Au revoir,' Jacques said. Hardly knowing what he did, he
freed himself, glanced towards Jenny, bowed, gave a forlorn
smile to Daniel, and walked hastily away.
But when he was leaving the station some secret instinct made
him halt at the pavement’s edge.
In the grey dusk the thoroughfare lay spread before him,
spangled with lamps and surging with its tides of traffic — a no-
man’s-land between two worlds. Beyond it lay in wait for him
his life of militant activity; a life of loneliness. But on the
hither side, in the station just behind him, what wonderful pos-
sibilities ! He did not know, would not define their nature. All
he knew was that to leave this place would be like rejecting a
heaven-sent chance, casting away for ever a golden opportunity.
Feebly, unheroically, he shirked making a decision. Some
porters’ trucks were drawn up along the wall behind him, and
he sat down on one — but not to think things out ; of that in his
present state of mingled apathy and nervous tension he was
incapable. His hat pushed back, he sat hunched forward, his
arms limply dangling, his eyes bent on the pavement, breathing
heavily, his mind devoid of thoughts.
Probably, had chance not intervened, he would have sat on
unmoving till presently his mind and nerves regained com-
posure. Then, caught up once more by the feverish rhythm of
his life, he would have rushed to the Humanite office to learn
the contents of the Servian reply. Had it so fallen out, a whole
cycle of potential experience would have escaped him, doubt-
less for ever. But chance did not intervene. A porter needed
the truck on which he was sitting. Jacques rose and with an
enigmatic smile glanced first at the map, then at his watch.
324
SATURDAY, JULY 25
Uncertainly, as though yielding to a casual impulse, he
walked back into the station, took a platform- ticket, crossed the
central hall and took his stand beside the platform exit gate.
13
Saturday, July 25
jenny’s panic flight and JACqUES’ PURSUIT
The Strasburg express had not yet left. The three tail-lamps
on the guard’s van glowed clear and still. Somewhere, hidden
amongst the people on the platform, were Daniel and Jenny.
Nine twenty-eight. Nine-thirty. A ripple of unrest traversed
the crowd. Doors slammed belatedly. Across the livid sheen
of the arc-lamps flurries of snow-white steam swirled up to the
glass dome ; the line of brightly lit compartments strained and
shuddered, to an accompaniment of little creaks and thuds.
Jacques’ eyes were riveted on the guard’s van, unmoving yet.
At last it rumbled off, unmasking, as the three red lights re-
ceded, the gleaming rails ; slowly the train bearing Daniel away
dwindled into the night.
‘What next?’ Jacques asked himself; he genuinely believed
he had not yet made up his mind.
He was standing beside the platform barrier, watching the
people who had seen the train off streaming by-r— dim wraiths
that as they passed under an arc-lamp just above him seemed
to come momentarily to real life, only to merge once more
into the shadows.
Yes, that was Jenny.
When he saw her in the distance, his first impulse was to
hide, to slink away. But something stronger than his shame
held him there ; more, led him to advance to meet her.
325
SUMMER, 1914
She was heading straight towards him. Her face still bore
the imprint of the parting with Daniel. She walked quickly,
with unseeing eyes.
Suddenly, from two yards away, she caught sight of him.
Jacques saw her face stiffen up at the shock and, as on that
previous evening at Antoine’s, a brief glint of terror shone in
her dilated pupils.
At first she could not believe that he had had the effrontery
to wait for her ; something must have delayed him at the station.
Her one idea was not to meet his eyes, to slip past him without
recognition. But she was caught in a stream of people hurrying
out; she could not help passing near him. Then she grew
conscious that his eyes were fixed on her intently, and it flashed
on her that he was there on her account. When she drew level
with him, mechanically he raised his hat. She took no notice
of the greeting but, edging round those in front of her, with
lowered eyes, hurried towards the exit, stumbling a little in her
haste. It was an effort to keep herself from running. Only one
thing mattered now — to get out of his clutches as quickly as
possible, to hide in the crowd, to dive into the Underground
station, to escape.
Jacques swung round, so as to keep her in sight, but did not
move away. Again he asked himself, ‘What next?’ This moment,
he knew, was critical, decisive. ‘Not to lose sight of her,’ he
thought. ‘That’s the great thing.’
He started off in pursuit.
Travellers, porters, trucks of luggage — every sort of obstacle
lay between them. He had to steer his way round a whole
family camped on their impedimenta; he all but fell over a
bicycle. When he looked up Jenny had vanished. He zig-zagged
across the crowd, stood on tip-toe to peer with distraught eyes
into the maelstrom of moving forms. At last, amid a stream
of people converging on the exit, he glimpsed a black veil,
slim shoulders . . . Now he must not lose her again, must keep
his gaze clamped like steel to that slender form !
But she had the start of him. While, hemmed in by the crowd,
he was vainly trying to advance, he saw her cross the central
hall and turn right, towards the entrance to the Underground.
326
SATURDAY, JULY 25
Chafing with impatience, he forced his way through the crowd,
roughly hustling aside all who were in his path, and started
down the steps. Where was she? Then he saw her at the foot
of the stairs. In a few strides he had caught her up.
Again he asked himself, ‘What next?’
He was quite near her now. Should he address her? Another
step and he was at her heels. Breathlessly he called her
name.
‘Jenny!’
She thought she had shaken him off, and his cry was like a
brutal blow dealt her from behind. She reeled forward.
Again he called her name. ‘Jenny I’
She gave no sign of having heard, but took to her heels,
spurred on by panic terror. Her heart had grown so heavy
that it seemed like one of those intolerable loads the dreamer
has to carry in a nightmare, making escape impossible.
At the end of the passage another flight of steps plunged
downwards; it was almost empty. Without troubling where it
led to, she started running down the steps. At the bottom she
saw an arrow pointing to the platform, a ticket-inspector
punching tickets. Feverishly she began fumbling in her bag.
Jacques saw the gesture. It meant she had a ticket. He had
none; the ticket-inspector would not let him by. Once she
reached the platform all hope of catching her up would be
lost. Promptly he made a spurt, drew level, passed her, then
swung round and boldly barred her way.
She was trapped, and knew it. Her limbs seemed giving way
beneath her. But she faced up, looked him full in the eyes.
He stood before her, barring the way, flushed, his features
blurred, staring at her with fanatic eyes; it was the face of a
criminal, or a madman.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘No!’
‘I insist. . . . ’
She held him with her gaze, mindful not to betray her terror ;
the pale, dilated pupils expressed only anger and disdain.
‘Go away!’ she panted hoarsely, without raising her voice.
For some moments they stayed unmoving, face to face,
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SUMMER, 1914
dazed by the violence of their emotions, staring at each other
ragefully.
But they were blocking the narrow passage-way; people
hurrying to the trains slipped between them, cursed them for
mannerless young people, then looked back, their curiosity
whetted. Noticing this, Jenny lost her nerve completely ; better
give in than cause a public scene. He was the stronger, there
was no eluding an interview. But, anyhow, it must not take
place here, under all these inquisitive eyes.
She turned on her heel and began walking rapidly up the
steps. Jacques followed.
Suddenly they found they were outside the station.
If she hails a taxi, Jacques thought, or jumps into a tram,
ni get in with her.
The street was brightly lit. Boldly Jenny threaded her way
across the traffic, Jacques at her heels. A motor-bus missed him
by inches; the driver threw a curse at him. But little he cared
for danger. His eyes were fixed on the slim form hurrying ahead
of him. Never had he felt so sure of himself.
As she stepped on to the pavement she looked back. He was
following, a few yards behind. Her mind was made up, she
would not try to avoid him. Indeed just now she was almost
eager to make an end of it, to let him hear how she despised
him. But — where? Certainly not in this crowded street.
She was unfamiliar with that part of Paris. She noticed a
boulevard going up to the right. It was thronged with people,
but she took it, at random.
‘Where’s she going?’ Jacques wondered. ‘It’s absurd. . . .’
His mood had changed; the morbid excitement of a few
minutes past had given place to a vague abashment, mingled
with a sentiment of pity.
Suddenly she paused. On her left was a short, narrow street,
dark and empty, overshadowed by a lofty building. Deliber-
ately she turned into it.
What would he do? She felt him coming closer. Straining her
ears, with tingling nerves, she braced herself to swing round at
his first word, at last to give free vent to her anger.
‘Jenny, please . . . please forgive me.’
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
The one thing she had not expected ! That note of humble,
fervent pleading in his voice! She felt ready to faint, halted,
steadied herself against the wall.
For a while she stayed thus, unmoving, hardly breathing,
her eyes closed.
He had taken off his hat and remained standing a little way
from her.
Tf you insist. I’ll leave you. I’ll go away at once without
another word. I promise it.’
She only grasped the meaning of his words a few seconds
after hearing them.
‘Do you want me to go away?’
She thought: ‘No!’ and suddenly was startled at herself.
Without waiting for an answer, he breathed her name again,
and then again, ‘Jenny!’ — so gently, shyly, tenderly, that the
mere tone of his voice was a declaration of love.
And she heard its message ; raising her eyes, she gazed covertly
across the shadows at his resolute, anxious face. The sudden
happiness that welled up from her heart almost suffocated her.
Again he asked :
‘Shall I go away?’
But now his tone was quite different; now he was sure she
would not dismiss him until she had heard him out.
She gave a slight shrug and instinctively assumed a look of
frigid scorn — her one resource for safeguarding her pride a
little longer.
‘Jenny, let me speak to you. I must. Please, please don’t
refuse me that. Then I’ll go. Come to that little public garden
in front of the Church. Anyhow you’ll be able to sit down there.
Will you come, Jenny?’
She felt the instance of his gaze compelling her, and it
thrilled her even more than his voice. How firm was his deter-
mination to solve the riddle of her heart !
She could not find strength enough to answer. But with a
stiff gesture, as if she still were yielding only to compulsion,
she seemed to tear herself away from the wall and started
walking again with the measured gait and unseeing eyes of a
somnambulist.
SUMMER, 1914
He walked at her side in silence, a little behind her. A cool,
delicate fragrance, so faint as to be hardly perceptible, came
in wafts towards him mingling with the warm air of the summer
night — -Jenny’s perfume. And emotion, the pangs of self-re-
proach, brought tears to his eyes.
That night for the first time the veils were lifted and he
admitted frankly to himself the truth : that he had been eating
his heart out for Jenny’s forgiveness, for her love, from the
moment she had crossed his path again. He had half a mind to
tell her so — but how could she believe him? He had always
behaved to her like a brute, a clumsy, mannerless boor! And
surfely nothing could ever efface this last affront, his out-
rageous conduct at the railway-station. . . .
14
Saturday, July 25
JACQUES AND JENNY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN NEAR
ST. Vincent’s church
Laid out terrace-wise in front of Saint Vincent-de-Paul’s
Church, the little public garden was at that hour completely
deserted, but the gentle lamplight flooding it dispelled any
suggestion of unseemly furtiveness. In the Place Lafayette, too,
which it overlooked, the traffic had died away. They entered
the garden by the top gate.
Taking the lead, Jacques walked towards the bench where
the light was brightest. Jenny let him guide her and when they
reached the bench sat down at once with a sedate assurance
that belied the fact her legs were giving way beneath her.
Though the rumble of the city reached their ears, it seemed to
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SATURDAY, JULY 25
her that a vast silence brooded round them, the sultry silence,
lightning-laden, that preludes a storm. Some elemental power
was hovering in the air, some dreadful thing quite beyond her
control, beyond his, perhaps; something that would suddenly
burst upon them. . . .
‘Jenny!’
The sound of a human voice came like a deliverance. And the
voice was calm, and almost comforting.
He had dropped his hat on the bench and was standing a
little way from her, talking. What was he saying?
‘I’ve never been able to forget you.’
A word rose to Jenny’s lips : ‘Liar I’ But she said nothing and
did not raise her eyes.
Vehemently he repeated; ‘Never!’ Then, after a pause that
seemed eternal, added, more softly: ‘Nor have you forgotten.’
She could not withhold a protesting gesture.
‘You may have loathed me, that I can well understand,’ he
went on sadly. ‘Indeed I loathe myself for what I did. But
forgotten, no ! All the time, deep down in our hearts, we’ve been
thinking of each other — on the defensive !’
She could not bring out a word. But, so that at least he
should not misconstrue her silence, she shook her head with all
the energy she could muster up.
Impulsively he moved towards her.
‘I can’t expect you ever to forgive me. I daren’t hope you
will. All I ask of you is to understand. To believe me when I
tell you, looking into your eyes, that, when I went away
four years ago, I had to do so. In justice to myself I couldn’t
act otherwise.’
Unwittingly he had imparted to that last phrase the fervour
which the ideas of ‘escape’ and ‘freedom’ always kindled in him.
She did not stir, but gazed with hard eyes at the gravel path.
‘When I think of all I’ve been through in these last four
years — !’ He paused, made an evasive gesture. ‘Oh, it’s not
that I want to hide anything from you, from you of all people !
No, far from it, my dearest wish would be to tell you everything,
everything . . . ’
‘I don’t ask anything of you,’ she exclaimed. Her voice had
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SUMMER, 1914
come back, and with it the harsh tone that made her seem so
inaccessible.
There was a silence.
‘Oh how far away from me I feel you at this moment !’ he
sighed. Then, after another pause, confessed with touching
simplicity: ‘It’s so different with me; I feel so near, so very
near you.’
Again that wistfully appealing note had crept into his voice,
and again Jenny took alarm. She realized she was alone with
Jacques in this little night-bound garden, far from everyone,
and made as if to rise and go.
‘No,’ he said with a compelling gesture. ‘Please hear what
I’ve to say. I’d never have dared to approach you deliberately
after behaving as I’ve done. But during these last few days
chance has brought us together again. And now — here you are
before me. Oh, if you could only read in my heart to-night ! It
all seems to mean so little to me now — my going away, those
four years’ absence and even — ^yes, I know it sounds abominable
— all the sorrow I may have brought on you. Yes, all that
hardly counts beside what I’m feeling to-night. All that, for me,
is past and done with, now that you’re with me, and at last
I’m talking to you. You can’t imagine the feelings that came
over me when I saw you again the other day at my brother’s
place.’
‘And over me !’ she could not help thinking. But for the
moment, this reminder of her anguish of the last few days only
made her furious with herself for having been so weak.
‘Listen !’ he said. ‘I don’t want to tell you any lies. I’ll talk
exactly as I might talk to myself. A week ago, that’s certain, I
shouldn’t have dared to say that all through those four years
I’d never ceased thinking about you. Perhaps I didn’t know
it then. I know it now. Now I realize what it was, the dull pain
that never left me, something that all the time, everywhere,
was eating my heart away. It was . . . my longing for you, you
whom I had lost. I had deliberately mutilated my life, and the
wound would not heal. Now I see it all so clearly, in this light
of the new dawn that’s risen for me since you’ve come back
into my life.’
332
SATURDAY, JULY 25
She hardly caught what he was saying. Her head was swim-
ming, and the racing pulses of her blood set up a ringing in her
startled brain. All the world was growing blurred, trees and
houses tottering. . . . For a moment she looked Jacques full in
the eyes, braved their impact without flinching, and her
look, her silence, the poise of her head, all seemed to say;
‘When will you stop hurting me like this?’
He went on speaking in the murmurous silence.
‘You say nothing, and I can’t read your thoughts. But that
makes no difference. Yes, it’s true; whatever you may be
thinking about me now hardly matters at all. For I’m certain
that, if only you’ll listen to me, I shall somehow convince you.
Sooner or later you’ll understand. I have the patience and I
have the power to win you back to me — I’m sure of it. Through
all my boyhood my whole world turned on you, I couldn’t
imagine for myself a future in which you had not a place —
even were it a reluctant place. Reluctant, as to-night. For
you’ve always been a little .... a little hard on me, Jenny.
Everything about me displeased you : my character, my
education, my clumsy manners. For years you countered all
my advances with a sort of cold dislike, which made me still
clumsier, still less likable. Isn’t that true?’
She thought: ‘Yes, it’s true.’
‘But even in those days your distaste for me hardly mattered.
As to-night it hardly matters. What a small thing that was
beside what / felt then, an emotion so strong and so stubborn —
so natural, too, and vital — that for a long time I could not, or
dared not, give it its real name!’ His voice shook, the words
came in little gasps. ‘Remember! That wonderful summer.
Our last summer at Maisons. Didn’t you realize, that summer,
that you and I were puppets in the hands of destiny? And
there was no escaping it?’
Each memory reawakened called up others, moving her so
poignantly that again she was on the brink of getting up and
going, so as to hear no more. Yet she stayed on, listening, not
missing a syllable. Her breath, too, was coming in gasps, she
had to gather all her energy to still her laboured respiration,
not to betray herself.
333
SUMMER, 1914
‘When once there has been between two people, Jenny, what
there has been between you and me — when they’ve been
drawn to each other as we were drawn, glimpsed such bound-
less hopes, such visions of the future — what difference can the
lapse of four years, ten years, make? No, something has come
into being that can never be blotted out. . . . It’s unthinkable !’
He lowered his voice, as if to impart a secret. ‘It goes on grow-
ing, perhaps without our noticing it, and strikes root deeper
and deeper in our hearts.’
It was as if he had laid bare a hidden wound, touched on a
raw point of which till now she had hardly been aware, so
deep it lay beneath the surface of her consciousness. She leaned
back a little, pressing her hand on the stone bench and stiffening
the muscles of her arm to keep herself erect.
‘And you are still the Jenny of that summer; I feel it, I know
I’m right. Exactly the same. Lonely, as in the past.’ He hes-
itated. ‘And unhappy, as in the past. I, too, am the same;
lonely, as lonely as I was then. Two lonely people who for four
years have been drifting, drifting apart, drifting hopelessly into
the darkness. And miraculously have met again. And now
that they have met .’
He paused; then cried with sudden vehemence, ‘Do you
remember that last day of September when I summoned up
all my courage to say to you as I said just now : “I’ve got to
speak to you”? That September morning beside the Seine —
do you remember it? Our bicycles were lying on the grass in
front of us. And, as to-night, it was I who talked. As to-night,
you made no answer. But you had come, and you listened to
me, as you’re listening now. And somehow I knew that you
were yielding. Our eyes were full of tears. When I stopped
speaking we didn’t dare to meet each other’s gaze, we parted
at once. Then, too, your silence seemed heavy with unspoken
thoughts, with sadness. But it was a radiant sadness — radiant
with hope.’
She gave a sudden start, stiffened up indignantly.
‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘And three weeks later . . . !’
Her voice failed on a choking sob. All unwittingly she was using
her anger to mask from herself the growing turmoil of her thoughts.
334
SATURDAY, JULY 25
Jacques’ doubts and fears had been swept away by that
reproachful, self-revealing cry; a tide of glorious rapture was
surging through his heart.
‘Yes, Jenny, I know it.’ His voice was trembling with emo-
tion. ‘I owe you an explanation for going away like that. I
won’t try to exculpate myself. A sort of madness came over me
and I gave way. You see, I felt quite desperate, what with my
home life, my father, my university career! And there was
something else as well.’
He had Gise in mind. . . . Dare he this evening, so soon . . . ?
He felt as if he were groping his way along the edge of a precipice.
‘Yes, there was something else.’ His voice sank to a whisper.
‘I’ll tell you everything. I want to be frank with you. Utterly
frank. It’s hard, you know. When one starts talking about
oneself, however much one tries, one can never tell the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. These sudden impulses I have
to run away, to smash everything and break loose, are a sort
of disease, I imagine. All my life I’ve longed for peace and
calm. I always fancy I’m the prey of others and, if only I could
escape from them, if I could manage to start a wholly new life,
I’d at least achieve tranquillity. But to-night, Jenny, I know
this definitely : if there’s one person in the world who can cure
me from breaking loose — it’sjrow.’
She turned on him again, with no less vehemence.
‘Did I keep you from going, four years ago?’
He had an impression of coming up against something hard
as steel that was part of her character and would always be so.
Even in the past, even on those rare occasions when their so
different temperaments seemed momentarily in harmony,
always he had encountered that secret, innate hardness.
‘That’s true. But ’ He hesitated. ‘Please do let me tell
you frankly what I think. What had you done, up to that time,
to hold me back?’
In a flash she thought : ‘Yes, I’d certainly have tried to do
something, had I known he meant to go.’
‘Don’t imagine for a moment Tm trying to e.xcuse my conduct.
No, I’d only like ’ The gentleness of his voice, his timid smile
seemed craving her pardon in advance for what he was about
335
SUMMER, 1914
to say. ‘What did I ever get from you? So little ! Now and then
a look that was less harsh, now and then a mood a shade less
distant. And sometimes a remark that showed a little trust in
me. That’s all. And all the rest of the time — reticence, rebuffs,
aloofness. Isn’t that true? Did you ever give me any encourage-
ment that might have been enough to counteract my morbid
hankering after the unknown?*
She was too honest with herself not to admit that this reproach
was justified. Indeed, it would have been a relief for her just
then to be able to blame herself as well as Jacques. But at that
moment he came and sat down beside her; she stiffened up at
once.
‘I haven’t yet told you the whole truth.’
The tone in which he spoke these last words was so changed,
so harrowing, and at the same time resolute, that she began
to tremble.
‘I hardly know how to tell you about — about such a thing.
But I’m determined to keep back nothing from you to-night,
nothing whatever. In those days there was someone else in my
life. A charming, sensitive little being : Gise.’
A keen blade seemed to pierce her heart. And yet the spon-
taneity of this confession, which he was not bound to make,
appealed to her so strongly that almost she forgot the pain of it.
Yes, he was hiding nothing from her; she could trust him
through and through ! A curious joy possessed her ; she had an
intuition that deliverance was near, soon she would be able to
desist from this inhuman aloofness and all its agonizing effort.
Jacques, the moment Gise’s name had crossed his lips, had
had to crush down an unforeseen emotion, an afterglow of that
uncertain love which as he thought had died long since. It
lasted but an instant, a faint, last, gleam from embers of a fire
that perhaps had waited till this night to flicker out.
‘How shall I explain my feelings towards Gise? Words are
such treacherous things. What I felt was an unconscious,
surface appeal, largely made up of childhood memories. No,
that’s understating it ; I don’t want to be unfair to what is past.
Gise’s presence was the one bright spot in my home life. She
has such a sweet nature, you know; a warm little heart that
336
SATURDAY, JULY 25
gives itself unstintingly. She should have been like a little
sister to me. But’ — his voice choked at the end of each phrase —
‘I’ve got to tell you the truth, Jenny. My feelings towards her
had ceased to be in any way . . . fraternal. Yes, all the purity
had gone out of them.’ He paused, then added in a whisper :
‘It was you I loved with a fraternal love, with a love that was
pure. It was you I loved — like a sister.’
A poignant spasm of remembrance gripped him and suddenly
his nerves gave way. A sob that he could neither foresee nor
keep back racked his throat. Lowering his head, he hid his face
between his hands.
Abruptly Jenny had risen and moved a step away. It had
shocked her, seeing Jacques break down like this, but it had
thrown her thoughts into confusion, too. And for the first time
she wondered if the grievances she had felt against him were
not due to a misconception.
He had not seen her rise. When he noticed she was no longer
at his side, he concluded she was going away, she was lost to him.
But he made no gesture of recall ; crouching forward, he went
on sobbing. Did he for a moment — half unwittingly, half
deliberately — visualize himself as another might have seen him
then, and guess that his tears might stand him in good stead?
She did not go away but stood there helplessly. A desperate
struggle was going on within her; under the frozen calm that
pride and modesty imposed, she was quivering with tenderness,
compassion. At last she brought herself to take the step that
separated her from Jacques and looked down on his head,
clasped in his hands, bowed low above his knees. Then
awkwardly she stretched her arm forward and her fingers lightly
brushed the shoulder that quivered at their touch. Before she
could draw back he had clasped her hand and was holding
her in front of him. Gently he pressed his forehead to her dress ;
she felt the contact sear her like a gust of flame. A still small
voice within warned her for the last time that she was slipping
fast into a perilous abyss, that she did wrong to love, to love
this man of all men. She tautened every sinew, but did not
draw back. With terror and delight she accepted the inevitable.
Too late ; nothing could save her now.
337
SUMMER, 1914
He stretched forth his arms as if to embrace her, but all he
did was to press the two slim, black-gloved hands between his.
And by those hands that now at last she yielded he drew her
upon the bench, beside him.
‘Only you can give me that sense of inner peace, the peace
I’ve never known before and I am feeling now, beside you.’
She thought; ‘I feel it to!’
‘Perhaps someone before me has told you that he loved you.’
His voice was level, but Jenny seemed to catch in it an under-
tone just strong enough to thrill her to the depths of her being,
spreading a vague, delicious havoc in her heart. ‘But of one
thing I’m positive: nobody else will ever bring to you a feeling
that’s as deep as mine, so long-lasting and so vital — in spite of
everything I’
She did not r^ly. She was worn out by her emotions. Every
moment she felt that he was taking a stronger hold of her and,
conversely, that she belonged to him the more — as more and
more she yielded to her love.
‘Perhaps you’ve loved someone else? I know nothing of your
life.’
She looked at him and her eyes held such amazement, shone
so crystal-clear, that he would have given anything in the
world to blot out the memory of his question.
Quite simply, in the matter-of-fact tone he might have used
for drawing attention to some obvious natural event, he said :
‘No one has ever been loved as you are loved by me.’ He
paused, then added : ‘I feel that my whole life has been merely
a prelude to this moment.’
She did not speak at once. At last in a voice so husky she
hardly recognized it as hers, she whispered :
‘Mine too, Jacques.’
Leaning back, she gazed up into the darkness. In one brief
hour she had changed more than in a whole decade; her soul
was being refashioned by the certitude she was loved.
Each felt the contact of the other’s arm and shoulder, the
soft warmth emanating from another’s body. Lost in a maze
of thought, with fluttering eyelids, wildly pulsing blood, they
kept silent, fearful of the solitude around them, of the brooding
.338
SATURDAY, JULY 25
/shadows; apprehensive even of their happiness, as though it
were no conquest but a capitulation to some dark necessity.
Time stood still — then suddenly from the church-tower
behind them clang upon clang peremptorily jarred the silence.
With an effort Jenny rose.
‘It’s eleven !’
‘Surely you needn’t leave me yet, Jenny?’
‘I’m afraid my mother may be worried,’ she explained
helplessly.
He did not try to keep her; indeed he felt a new and curious
pleasure in renouncing for her sake what he most desired.
Side by side, without speaking, they walked down the steps
to the Place Lafayette. As they reached the pavement a taxi
on the prowl drew up.
‘Do let me see you home anyhow,’ Jacques said.
‘No, please.’
Her voice was sad, coaxing and firm at once. And suddenly,
as if to excuse herself, she gave him a little smile. It was the
first time for many years that he had seen her smile.
‘I’d like to be alone a bit,’ she said, ‘before meeting Mamma.’
He caught himself thinking ‘Very well then’ and was amazed
that this parting should seem so easy.
The smile had left her face, and a look of positive distress
had settled on the delicately moulded features ; it was as though
this new-won happiness were still too recent to have effaced
the marks of years of suffering.
Shyly she asked : ‘To-morrow?’
‘Where?’
Her answer came at once.
‘I’ll be at home all day. I’ll stay in for you.’
He could not help being a little surprised at first ; but imme-
diately, with a feeling of pride, he told himself that they had
nothing to conceal.
‘At your place, then. To-morrow.’
Gently she freed her hand, which he was squeezing almost
roughly. Then, stooping, she entered the taxi.
Just as it began to move away, a new thought waylaid him :
War! It was as if a chill had crept into the air, and the light
339
SUMMER, 1914
suddenly gone grey. Gazing at the car already almost out of
sight, he struggled vainly against an onrush of overwhelming
fear. The spectre holding Europe in suspense that night seemed
to have waited till he was alone again, at a loose end, to swoop
on him.
‘No, not war!’ he muttered, clenching his fists. ‘Not war, but
Revolution !’
For the sake of the love to which henceforth his life was
pledged, he longed more than ever for a new world, a world
of purity and justice.
15
Sunday, July 26
THE WAR-CLOUDS DARKEN
J A c Q,u E s woke with a start. Where was he? What was this
shabby room? Half dazed he blinked towards the window,
waiting for memory to return. Gradually it all came back.
Jenny, the little garden by the church, the Tuileries, this small
commercial hotel behind the Gare d’Orsay into which he had
turned at daybreak.
Yawning, he looked at his watch. Nine already I Weary as he
was, he sprang .briskly out of bed, drank a glass of water,
scanned in the glass his haggard features, shining eyes — and
smiled.
He had spent the night roaming about Paris. Towards mid-
night, without realizing how he had got there, he had found
himself at the Humanite office. Half-way up the stairs he had
turned back. He had learned the latest news from the evening
papers, which he had glanced through soon after leaving Jenny,
under a street-lamp. He did not feel up to facing his friends’
340
SUNDAY, JULY 26
political confabulations. And on no account would he break
the truce he had made with himself, or let the tragic turn
events were taking mar the splendid hope which made life
seem so wonderful that night. Aimlessly he had walked on and
on, in the warm darkness — his brain in a ferment, in his heart
high festival. The thought that in all the great, night-bound
city round him no one but Jenny knew the secret of his happi-
ness filled him with j'oy. For the first time, perhaps, he had a
feeling that the burden of loneliness which had weighed on
him always, everywhere, had lifted. He walked rapidly ahead,
to a gay, lilting rhythm, as if no slower step could match his
jubilation. The thought of Jenny never left him. He repeated
to himself the words she had spoken, thrilling to their echo,
hearing still each faint modulation of her voice. It was not
merely that her presence never left him; she had entered into
him, taken possession of him so thoroughly that his own per-
sonality wa9» dispossessed and the look of things, the very
meaning of the world, seemed transformed, spiritualized.
Much later - on he made his way into that part of the
Tuilerics Gardens, near the Pavilion de Marsan, which re-
mains open all night. At that hour there was nobody about ; he
stretched himself full length on one of the benches. From pools
and lawns a cool, clean fragrance was rising, laden at whiles
with wafts of heavier perfume from petunias and geraniums.
He dreaded the thought of sleeping, for that would mean
an end of relishing his joy. He had stayed thus till the sky paled
at daybreak, with no clear thoughts in mind, gazing up at the
zenith, watching the host of stars retreating one by one. His
mind was full of grandiose visions and a peace so pure, so vast,
that never had he known its like all his life long.
No sooner was he outside the hotel than he started hunting
for a newspaper kiosk. On that day, Sunday, July 26, all the
papers printed, under indignant headlines, the Havas cable
relating to the Servian reply, and with an unanimity the cue
for which had certainly come from the Government, protested
against the blustering attitude taken by Von Schoen at the
Quai d’Orsay.
The mere sight of the headlines, the smell of all these papers
341
SUMMER, 1914
fresh from the press, revived his fighting spirit, lie jumped on
a passing bus so as to reach the Humaniti offices the quicker.
Early though it was, there was an unwonted bustle in the
building. Gallot, Pages, and Stefany were already at their
posts. News of startling developments in the Balkan imbroglio
had just come in.
On the previous day, when the time stipulated by the Austrian
note expired, Pachitch, the Prime Minister, had handed the
Servian reply to Baron Giesl, the Austrian representative at
Belgrade. This reply was more than conciliatory; it was a
capitulation. Servia gave way at every point, agreed to repu-
diate officially all propaganda directed against the Austro-
Hungarian monarchy, and to publish this repudiation in the
Official Gazette. Servia further undertook to dissolve the
nationalist organization known as ‘Norodna Obrana’ and even
to cashier such army officers as were suspected of anti-Austrian
activities. All Servia asked was to be given further information
as to the exact wording of the notice to be published in the
Official Gazette, and as to the nature of the court to be
appointed for’enquiring into the guilt of the suspected officers.
These trivial reservations were of a wholly inoffensive nature.
Nevertheless, as though the Austrian Embassy had been given
orders at all costs to break off diplomatic relations between the
countries and force a war on Servia, hardly was Pachitch back
in his office than, to his dismay, Giesl apprised him that ‘the
reply was unsatisfactory,’ and that the Austrian diplomatic
staff was leaving Servian territory that night. The Servian
Government, which, as a precautionary measure, had taken
preliminary steps for mobilization in the afternoon, promptly
evacuated Belgrade and withdrew to Kraguievatz.
There was no blinking the seriousness of the situation.
Beyond all doubt, Austria was out for war.
Far from discouraging the group at the Humanite office, the
imminence of catastrophe seemed actually to have strengthened
their belief that the cause of peace would triumph in the end.
And their hopes were lent support by the detailed information
Gallot had collected as to the doings of the Socialist Interna-
tional. The anti-war campaign amongst the proletariat was
342
SUNDAY, JULY q6
making headway; even the anarchists were joining in the
struggle. Their Congress was to take place at London in a
week’s time and a debate on the European situation was the
first item on their programme. A mass meeting was being
organized, for a near date, by the Confederation Generate du
Travail. Its official organ. La Bataille Sjindicalisle, had just
published in thick print the resolutions voted at the Trade
Union Conferences as to the line to be taken by the worker
in the event of war. ‘The Workers’ response to any declaration
of war must be the immediate outbreak of a revolutionary
general strike.’
Furthermore, all the leaders of the Socialist International,
after an exchange of views, had been summoned to a convention
at the People’s House in Brussels and were now making arrange-
ments for a general meeting of their committee with the
specific object of co-ordinating methods of resistance in every
European country, and taking effective steps in close co-opera-
tion to enable the nations threatened by war to checkmate the
reckless policy being followed by their governments.
All which circumstances seemed highly encouraging.
In the Teutonic countries the opposition set up by the paci-
fists was particularly impressive. The latest issues of the radical
Austrian and German newspapers, which had just arrived,
were being passed round, and Gallot translated them, inter-
spersing hopeful comments. The Viennese Arbeiterzeitung
published an elaborate manifesto drawn up by the Austrian
Socialist Party, unreservedly disapproving of the ultimatum and
calling for a peaceful settlement of the dispute, in the name of
the united working class. ‘Peace hangs on a thread to-day. We
refuse to shoulder the responsibility of this war, against which
we energetically protest.’
In Germany, too, the left-wing parties were in revolt. Ve-
hement articles in the Leipziger Volkszeitung and Vorwarts called
on the Government to repudiate emphatically the line of policy
adopted by Austria. The social-democrats were organizing
a mass meeting at Berlin for Tuesday, the 28th. In a strongly
worded protest addressed to the community at large, they
insisted that even if a Balkan war broke out, Germany
343
SUMMER, 1914
must remain strictly neutral. Gallot attached high importance
to a manifesto launched, the previous evening, by the governing
committee of the Party. He read out some passages from it,
translating as he went. ‘The war-lust fostered by Austrian
imperialism bids fair to involve Europe in wholesale carnage
and disaster. We condemn the manoeuvres of the Servian
Nationalists, but by the same token the provocative attitude of
the Austro-Hungarian Government calls for our vigorous
protest. In its demands we find a brutal insolence which has no
precedent in dealings with an independent nation. No other
motive can be assigned to it than the desire to bring about a
war. The class-conscious German proletariat, in the name of
humanity and civilization, vigorously protests against the
criminal machinations of the war-mongers; we call per-
emptorily on the Government to bring its influence to bear
on Austria for the preservation of peace.’ This passage was
welcomed with enthusiastic cries by the little group round
Gallot.
Jacques did not share his friends’ unqualified approval.
Strong though were the terms of the manifesto, they were not,
to his thinking, strong enough. He regretted that no overt
reference was made to the complicity between the two Ger-
manic Powers. There were grounds for suspecting that the two
Chancellors, Berchtold and Bethmann-Hollweg, were working
hand in glove, and had these suspicions been set forth in black
and white, the social-democrats might well have enlisted all
classes of Germans on their side against the Government.
Jacques criticized with some asperity the, to his mind, over-
cautious line that German socialism had adopted. In thus
attacking the German socialists he was indirectly attacking
the French socialists, and especially the parliamentary group,
the Humaniti contingent, whose conduct during the last few
days had struck him as pusillanimous, unduly nationalist in
outlook, and too inclined to truckle to the Government. Gallot
met his criticisms by quoting Jaures, who had no doubts as to
the staunchness of the social-democrats and the efficacy of
their anti-war campaign. Nevertheless, in answer to a question
put him by Jacques, Gallot was forced to admit that — if the
344
SUNDAY, JULY 26
news coming in from Berlin was to be trusted — most of the
official socialist leaders had come to accept the fact that
military action by Austria against Servia was practically in-
evitable, and were prepared to fall in line with the Wilhelm-
strasse programme : the localization of the war, at all costs, on
the Austro-Servian border.
‘Given the attitude of Austria just now,’ he said, ‘and the
way she’s committed herself — and mind you, there’s no getting
away from that ! — that idea of localizing the war is a sound and
practical plan. We’ve got to make the best of a bad job; all we
can do is to prevent the trouble from spreading.’
Jacques did not share his opinion.
‘If we confine ourselves to trying to limit the conflict, it’s as
good as admitting we accept — to say the least of it — a war
between Servia and Austria. And that necessarily implies we
more or less tacitly decline to take part in the mediatory action
of the Powers. That’s serious enough. But that’s not all. Even
if the war is localized, it confronts Russia with a dilemma :
either she climbs down and allows the Servians to be crushed,
or else she takes up arms for them against Austria. The odds
are, I should say, that the Russian imperialists will snatch at
this long-awaited chance of vindicating their national prestige —
in which case they’ll make no bones about mobilizing against
Austria. You can see what that would lead to; automatically
it would bring the alliances into play, and the Russian mobiliza-
tion would be the signal for a general outbreak. So, whether
knowingly or not, by her efforts to “localize” the conflict,
Germany is spurring Russia into war. The one hope of peace,
to my mind, is, on the contrary — as England proposes — not to
localize the conflict but to treat it as a diplomatic problem
involving the whole of Europe and directly concerning all the
Powers ; a problem which it’s up to the various Foreign Offices
to solve between them.’
They had heard him out without interrupting, but no sooner
was he silent than came a volley of protests. Each began de-
claring in an authoritative tone, as if he were in the secrets of
the Cabinets concerned : ‘What Germany wants . . . ‘Russia’s
quite decided . . . and the like.
345
SUMMER, 1914
The discussion was growing more and more chaotic, when
Cadieux appeared. He had returned from his trip to Vaize
with Jaures and Moutet, and come straight on from the station.
Gallot got up at once.
‘Is the Skipper back?’
‘No. He’ll be here this afternoon. He stopped off at Lyons,
where he’d an appointment with a “silkworm.” ’ He grinned.
‘Oh, I’m not giving our friend away. The chap he’s meeting
is a bigwig in the silk industry — but he’s a socialist (there are
some capitalists like that) and a pacifist as well. Fabulously
rich, it seems. And he proposes to turn over some of his shekels
into the International funds — for propaganda. No good looking
a gift horse in the teeth, eh boys?’
‘If all the socialists with the money-bags did as much!’
Jumelin muttered.
Jacques gave a start; his eyes stayed fixed on Jumelin.
In the centre of the room Cadieux went on talking ; he had
embarked on a stirring account of his electioneering trip. ‘I
never saw the Skipper in such form,’ he declared. He told how
half an hour before the meeting, Jaures had learnt of the
Servian climb-down, Austria’s rejection of it, the breaking-off
of diplomatic relations, and the mobilization on both sides.
‘The Skipper was all upset when he went on to the platform.
That was the only pessimistic speech he’s ever made.’ On the
spur of the moment Jaures had launched into a dramatic
picture of the European scene. In a voice of bitter indignation,
he had blamed all the nations, turn by turn, for sharing in
the general guilt. Austria was to blame; time and again, by
acts of criminal rashness, she had all but set Europe ablaze,
and to-day her evil intent was manifest; what was her object
in foisting this quarrel on Servia if not to shore up her tottering
monarchy by yet another act of violence? Germany was guilty
of having seemed, during the preliminary phases, to back the
warlike schemes of Austria, instead of urging moderation on
her. Russia’s guilt lay in her perpetual intrigues to extend her
empire southwards ; for years now she had been dreaming of a
Balkan war in which, under colour of safeguarding her prestige,
she could intervene without undue risk, push on to Constan-
346
SUNDAY, JULY 26
tinople, and seize the Straits. France, too, was guilty; her
colonial policy and, above all, her conquest of Morocco had
made it impossible for her to protest against similar annexations
made by others, and to impose her authority in the cause of
peace. Guilty, too, were all the statesmen of Europe, all the
Foreign Offices, to whose activities were due the divers secret
treaties imperilling the very existence of the nations concerned,
and serving only to enable their governments to embark on
imperialist wars. ‘We have tremendous odds against us,’ he
had thundered, ‘and against the cause of peace. There’s but
one hope left of saving the world from war to-day, and that is
for the proletariat to stand up as one man against it . . . But
when I say these things I feel a sort-of despair come over me.’
Jacques listened with half an ear; when Cadieux had
finished, he got up.
A tall, gaunt man, white-haired, grey-bearded, had just
entered. He wore a flowing tie and a wide-brimmed felt hat. It
was Jules Guesde.
A silencefell on the group. Guesde’s presence, the disillusioned,
rather bitter expression of his ascetic face always produced a
momentary feeling of discomfort.
Jacques stayed leaning against the wall for a few minutes;
then suddenly he seemed to come to a decision, glanced at the
clock, nodded hastily to Gallot by way of farewell, and hurried
to the door.
Militants were coming up and going down the stairs in threes
and fours, each group engaged in noisy argument and taking
no notice of the others. At the bottom of the flight, an old
working man in blue overalls was leaning by himself against
the door-post. His hands in his pockets, he was watching with a
far-away look the people passing in the street. He was chanting
in a hollow voice the anarchist refrain — which Ravachol had
roared out at the scaffold’s foot.
You’ll be merry as a lark
When you’ve lynched that ruddy shark
(Damn his eyes !)
Your landlord !
347
SUMMER, 1914
Passing, Jacques gazed a moment at the singer. That tanned,
deeply scored face, with the bald, domed forehead, with its
mixture of nobility and vulgarity, of energy and weariness
was not unknown to him. Only when he was in the street did
he remember ; he had seen the man one evening of the previous
winter at the Etendard office, and Mourlan had told him that
the old fellow had just been released from prison, where he
had served a sentence for distributing anti-militarist propaganda
at barrack-gates.
It was eleven. The city sweltered in a heat-haze presaging
storm. The picture of Jenny, which, faithful as his shadow,
had been haunting him ever since he awakened, seemed
suddenly to materialize; he saw her slender form, her slightly
drooping shoulders, her white neck glimmering through the
loosely clinging veil. A smile of happiness rose to his lips. She,
assuredly, would approve of the resolve he had just made.
At the Place de la Bourse a cheerful band of youngsters on
bicycles swept past him. They had parcels of eatables strapped
to their machines, and were evidently off for a picnic in the
country. He followed them with his eyes for a moment, then
started off towards the Seine. He was in no hurry. He intended
to see Antoine, but knew his brother was rarely back before
noon. The streets were quiet — no one seemed about — and
the freshly watered asphalt gave off a pungent odour. He kept
his eyes fixed on the pavement, unconsciously humming as
he walked :
You’ll be merry as a lark
When you’ve lynched that ruddy shark
(Damn his eyes !) . . .
"Dr. Thibault isn’t yet back, sir,’ the concierge informed him.
He decided to wait outside and started walking up and down
the street. He recognized the car at a distance. Antoine was
driving; he was by himself and looked worried. Before stopping
he gazed at his brother and shook his head gloomily several
times.
‘What’s your idea of all that?’ He pointed to a sheaf of news-
papers on the seat beside him.
348
SUNDAY, JULY 26
Jacques made a wry face but did not answer.
■ ‘Won’t you come up and have a spot of lunch?’ Antoine
suggested.
‘No, thanks. I’ve only a word or two to say.’
‘Here, in the street?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come into the car, anyhow.’
Jacques sat down beside his brother.
‘I want to talk to you — about money.’ He seemed to get the
words out with some difficulty.
‘About money?’ For a moment Antoine looked surprised.
Then at once he exclaimed : ‘Why, of course ! How much
would you like?’
Jacques stopped him with a fretful gesture.
‘That’s not it. I want to talk to you about that letter you
sent me, after Father’s death. About my . . .’
‘Your share of the estate.’
‘Yes.’
He felt a naive relief at not having to utter the words.
‘So you — you’ve changed your mind, eh?’ Antoine remarked
tentatively.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Good !’ Antoine rejoined. He was wearing now the look that
so exasperated Jacques; the look of an astute clairvoyant
reading another’s thought.
‘With all due deference,’ he smiled, ‘I must say that the
letter you wrote me on that occasion ’
Jacques cut him short. ‘I merely want to know ’
‘What’s become of your share?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s there at your disposal.’
‘Would it be a complicated business, if I wanted to — to
collect my share? Would it take long?’
‘Nothing could be simpler. You’ve only got to drop in at our
lawyer, Beynaud’s office, and ask him to render an account
of his administration. After that, you’ll have to see Jonquoy,
the stockbroker with whom the scrip has been deposited, and
give him your instructions.’
349
SUMMER, 1914
‘Could it be fixed up by to-morrow?’
‘At a pinch it might. Are you in such a hurry?’
‘Yes.’
Antoine did not venture on further questions. ‘All you’ve
got to do,’ he said, ‘is to warn Beynaud that you’re coming. By
the way, won’t you be looking in at my place this afternoon,
to meet Rumelles?’
‘Perhaps. . . . Yes, I’ll come.’
‘Then it’s quite simple. I’ll give you a letter and you can
take it to Beynaud yourself, to-morrow.’
‘Right!’ Jacques said, opening the door. ‘I’m off now.
Thanks. I’ll come back this afternoon and get the letter.’
As he took off his gloves, Antoine watched his brother’s
disappearing form. ‘What a queer chap he is! He never even
asked how much his share amounted to !’
Picking up the bundle of newspapers, he stepped out of the
car ; wrapt in thought, he walked up to his door.
‘There’s been a telephone call, sir,’ Leon informed him,
without raising his eyes. It was the ambiguous formula Leon
had adopted once for all, so as to avoid mentioning Madame de
Battaincourt by name, and Antoine never thought fit to
remonstrate with him regarding it. ‘You were specially re-
quested, sir, to ring up the moment you came back.’
Antoine frowned. Anne had a perfect mania for ringing him
up at all hours on the least pretext. Nevertheless he walked
at once to his little study, and went up to the telephone. His
straw hat on the back of his head, his hand hovering over the
receiver, he passed some undecided moments, gazing vaguely
at the newspapers he had tossed on to the table. Then abruptly
he turned on his heel.
‘No, I’m damned if I do !’ he muttered.
Really, to-day, he had other things to think about. . . .
Now that his talk with Antoine had put his mind at rest,
Jacques’ one idea was to see Jenny again. But, on account of
Madame de Fontanin, he hardly dared to call at their flat
before half-past one or two.
‘What has she told her mother?’ he wondered. ‘And what
sort of reception shall I have?’
350
SUNDAY, JULY 26
He turned into a students’ eating-house near the Odeon and
slowly ate his lunch. Then, to kill time, he took a stroll in the
Luxembourg Gardens. Dark clouds rising in the West hid the
sun now and again.
He was pondering on a jingoistic article in the Action Frangaise
which he had just read. ‘For one thing,’ he reflected, ‘England
won’t join in. She’ll stay neutral and watch events, till the time
comes for mediation. Russia will need a couple of months to
get her army in the field. France will be beaten to her feet
long before that. So, even for a nationalist, peace is the only
reasonable solution. Articles like that are positively criminal;
Stefany may say what he likes, but they put ideas in people’s
heads, there’s no denying that. Luckily the masses have a
very strong sense of self-preservation, and — whatever people
may say — a marvellous grip of realities.’
The spacious garden was dappled with light and shade, gay
with flowers and greenery and romping children. His eye fell
on an empty seat at the corner of a shrubbery and he dropped
wearily into it. Tingling with impatience, incapable of steadying
his mood, he let his thoughts drift idly from one theme to an-
other: Europe, Meynestrel, Jaures, Antoine, his father’s estate
— and Jenny. He heard the Luxembourg clock strike the
quarter, then the half hour, and bade himself wait another ten
minutes. Then, at the end of his endurance, he jumped up and
strode ahead.
Jenny was not at home.
The one thing he had not reckoned on ! Hadn’t she said
‘I’ll stay in all day’?
Completely at a loss, he had the explanation repeated to him
several times. Madame de Fontanin had left Paris for some
days. Mademoiselle Jenny had gone to see her off and had not
said when she would be back.
At last he tore himself away from the entrance ; a fit of dizziness
came over him in the street. Such was the chaos of his thoughts
that he even wondered for a moment if there were not some
connexion between Madame de Fontanin’s abrupt departure
and the news Jenny might well have imparted to her when she
got home the previous night. On second thoughts he knew the
351
SUMMER, 1914
supposition was absurd. No, he must give up hoping to under-
stand, until he had seen Jenny again. He recalled the concierge’s
words: ‘Madame de Fontanin will be away for some days.’
In that case Jenny would be alone in Paris for a while — a
prospect which consoled him a little for his disappointment.
Meanwhile, what was he to do with himself? He had kept
the afternoon free of engagements; he had no appointment
t ill a quarter-past eight, when Stefany was to put him in touch
with two particularly active militants attached to one of the
local sections.
Antoine’s invitation came back to his mind, and he decided
to spend the time before returning to see Jenny at his brother’s
place.
16
Sunday, July 26
A SUNDAY AFTERNOON GATHERING AT ANTOINE’s FLAT
There were half a dozen guests already assembled in
Antoine’s big reception-room. As Jacques, on entering, looked
round for his brother, Manuel Roy came forward to greet him,
explaining that Antoine was in his consulting-room with Dr.
Philip and would be back in a moment.
Jacques shook hands withStudler, Jousselin and Dr. Therivier,
a genial, bearded little man whom he remembered having met
at his dying father’s bedside.
A tall man, still young, with a resolute face bringing to mind
Napoleon’s in his youth, was holding forth in front of the
fireplace.
‘I don’t deny,’ he was saying, ‘that all the governments are
declaring with equal vigour and with every appearance of
352
SUNDAY, JULY 26
sincerity that they’re not out for war. They’d do better to prove
their good intentions by showing more readiness to meet the
other chap half-way. But they rant away about the national
honour and prestige, their indefeasible rights, and lawful
aspirations! Each seems to be saying, “Yes, I want peace —
but a peace that pays me.” And nobody’s shocked by this way of
talking. The man in the street’s exactly like his rulers ; his one
idea is to do a good stroke of business. That’s what is so serious ;
it’s impossible for everyone to score a profit; the only way to
peace is the way of mutual concessions.’
‘Who is it?’ Jacques asked Roy.
‘Finazzi, the oculist. A Corsican. Like to be introduced
to him?’
‘No, no !’ Jacques hastily replied.
Roy smiled and, shepherding Jacques into a corner of the
room, began chatting with him amiably.
He was familiar with Switzerland and especially Geneva,
where on several consecutive summers he had taken part in
the local regattas. On being asked what he was doing there,
Jacques talked vaguely about journalism, literary work. He
was determined to maintain an attitude of reserve, not to parade
his opinions in this milieu. He hastened to switch the conversa-
tion towards the war-menace; remembering some remarks
the young doctor had thrown out at their previous meeting,
he was curious to hear Roy’s views.
‘Personally,’ Roy began, stroking with his finger-tips his
small, silky, brown moustache, ‘ever since the autumn of 1905
I’ve had the possibility of a war in mind. I was only sixteen
then. I’d just floored my matric. and was starting on the
Senior course. Schoolboy as I was, I realized quite well that
my generation would have to count on a day of reckoning with
Germany; and many of my school-friends felt as I did. We
didn’t want a war, but from that time we braced ourselves
to face it as a natural, inevitable event.’
Jacques’ eyebrows lifted. ‘Natural?’
‘Why, yes! There’s an old score to pay off. And we’ve got
to square up to it sooner or later, if we don’t want France
wiped off the map.’
353
N
SUMMER, 1914
Just then, to Jacques’ annoyance, Studler turned abruptly
and walked towards them. Jacques would have preferred to
carry on his little investigation without the presence of a third
party. Hostile though he was to Roy, he did not dislike him in
the least.
‘ “If we don’t want France wiped off the map” !’ Studler
repeated in a surly tone. He turned to Jacques. ‘Is there any-
thing more sickening than the way these nationalists have of
claiming a monopoly in patriotism, and always trying to hide
their war-lust under a mask of patriotic sentiments? One’ld
think to hear them that a love of war was the hall-mark of
patriotism.’
‘Congratulations, Caliph,’ Roy grinned ironically. ‘But the
men of my generation aren’t as easy-going as you are ; they’re
more touchy where honour is concerned. We’ve had enough
of taking Germany’s bullying methods lying down.’
‘Still so far, you must admit,’ Jacques put in, ‘the provoca-
tion’s come entirely from Austria — and it isn’t aimed at us.’
‘So, pending the time when our turn comes, you’re prepared
to stand by with folded arms and watch them gobble up
Servia?’
Jacques made no reply.
‘The defence of small nations, so that’s the latest war-cry?’
Studler guffawed. ‘Then, when the English coolly annexed
the gold mines of South Africa, why didn’t France rush in
to help the Boers, a small, weak nation — far more likable,
moreover, than the Servians? And to-day why don’t we rush
to the rescue of poor, distressful Ireland? Do you seriously
regard any of these noble gestures as worth the risk of launching
all the European armies at each other’s throats?’
Roy merely smiled; then, addressing himself to Jacques,
remarked :
‘The Caliph’s one of those worthies with a sentimental turn
of mind, who have a lot of silly ideas about war, and haven’t a
notion what it is in reality.’
‘“In reality”?’ Studler cut in. ‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘I mean — well, several things. First of all, a law of nature, a
deep-seated human instinct that you can’t uproot in a man
354
SUNDAY, JULY 26
without mutilating him shamefully. A healthy man should
exercise his strength ; that’s a law of his being. Then, again, war
provides a man with opportunities for developing a host of
virtues, of rare and very fine qualities — that have a tonic
effect on his morale.’
‘What qualities?’ Jacques did his best to keep to a tone of
mere enquiry.
Roy cocked his little bullet-head towards the questioner.
‘Why, obviously those qualities that I rank highest. Manly
enterprise, a taste for risks, a sense of duty and, best of all,
a spirit of self-sacrifice, a readiness to subordinate one’s private
inclinations to a great collective and heroic ideal. Don’t you
realize how heroism can appeal to any young man that’s
worth his salt?’
‘I do,’ Jacques agreed laconically.
‘There’s something splendid about physical courage !’ Roy’s
face lit up with a smile of exultation. ‘War for fellows of our
age is a glorious sport — there’s no game in the world to touch it !’
‘You call that “sport,” ’ growled Studler, ‘when its price is
paid in human lives?’
‘Well, what of it?’ the young man riposted. ‘Isn’t the human
race prolific enough to indulge in that form of luxury now and
then — when it’s needful?’
‘Needful?’
‘A good blood-letting is necessary sometimes for a nation’s
health. When there’s been a too long spell of peace, the world
secretes a host of toxins which it has to get out of its system
somehow, like the man who leads a too sedentary life. And just
now, I believe, a good blood-letting will do the French morale
a world of good. The European morale, too. Indeed it’s indis-
pensable, if we don’t want this Western civilization to sink in
a morass of decadence, of vileness.’
‘Vileness, to my mind,’ Studler said, ‘is just that — giving
way to cruelty and hatred.’
‘What’s cruelty or hatred got to do with it?’ the young man
retorted with a contemptuous shrug. ‘We’ve heard those silly
old cliches too often ; they’re the stock-in-trade of pacifists. But,
I assure you, for men of my generation war doesn’t involve
355
SUMMER, 1914
any appeal to hatred, still less to cruelty. War isn’t a quarrel
between one man and another, it’s on a far grander scale, a
test-match between nations. A great adventure. The king of
sports ! The battlefield’s a stadium in which two rival teams
compete. And the men who’re fighting aren’t enemies, they’re
competitors.’
Studler gave a short whinnying laugh and fixed his eyes on
the young fighting-cock, the dark, dilated, almost expressionless
pupils swimming in pools of milky whiteness.
T’ve a brother who’s in the army, in Morocco,’ Roy went on
in a gentler voice. ‘You haven’t a notion. Caliph, what army
life is really like. The mentality of the younger officers, their
fundamental decency, their self-devotion, would be a great
surprise to you. They’re living examples of all that selfless
courage can mean, put to the service of a fine ideal. Some of
your socialists might do worse than go to school with them.
They’d have a glimpse of what a disciplined community can be,
in which each individual genuinely dedicates himself to the
common good and leads an almost monastic life, a life that
leaves no room for sordid personal ambition.’
He had turned towards Jacques as if asking his approval, and
the frankness of his look made Jacques feel it would be unfair
to keep silence any longer.
‘I believe that’s quite correct.’ He weighed his words care-
fully. ‘Anyhow as regards the younger officers of our army
overseas. And there’s nothing more moving than to see men
stoically prepared to give their lives up for an ideal, whatever
that ideal may be. But I think, too, that these young officers
are victims of a ghastly error. They imagine in good faith that
they’re serving a noble cause, while in reality they’re serving
the interests of capitalism. You were speaking of the coloniza-
tion of Morocco, well ’
‘The conquest of Morocco,’ Studler cut in, ‘was nothing more
than a racket, a huge conspiracy. And the men who go and get
themselves killed over there are its dupes. It never strikes them
that they’re giving up their lives to serve a gang of brigands.’
Roy turned pale. His eyes were aflame with indignation.
‘In this rotten age we live in,’ he exclaimed, ‘the army is
356
SUNDAY, JULY 20
the one place where there’s still some decency, some nobility
still left.’
‘Ah, here’s your brother!’ Studler touched Jacques’ arm.
Dr. Philip had just come in, followed by Antoine.
Jacques did not know Philip, but he had heard his brother
talk of him so often that he observed the new-comer with
interest. He saw an elderly man, with a small pointed beard,
walking with little springy steps and wearing an alpaca coat
so much too large for him that it dangled from his shoulders
like a scarecrow’s tattered smock. The bright beady eyes, lurking
beneath bushy eyebrows, shot glances right and left without
coming to rest on anyone.
There was a lull in the conversation, while those present
one by one greeted the eminent physician, who returned their
handshake limply.
Antoine introduced his brother. Jacques was conscious of
being subjected to a scrutiny so keen as to be almost rude, the
mask, perhaps, of an excessive shyness.
‘Ah yes, your brother . . . Quite so,’ Philip muttered in his
nasal drawl, chewing his underlip; the tone of voice seemed
to imply that he was thoroughly conversant with Jacques’ life
and character, down to the smallest detail.
All at once, his eyes still fixed on Jacques, he said :
‘You’ve been in Germany a good deal, I hear. So have I.
That’s interesting, now.’
He was moving forward with little steps as he spoke, steering
Jacques towards a window where they were out of earshot of
the others.
‘Germany,’ he continued, ‘has always been a puzzle to me.
A land of extremes ... of paradoxes, don’t you agree? Could
you find anywhere else in Europe a type of man more con-
genitally peace-loving than the German? No. And yet there’s
militarism in their blood, it seems.’
‘Still,’ Jacques ventured to put in, ‘the internationalist group
in Germany is one of the most active in Europe.’
‘Do you think so? Yes, all that’s very interesting. But I must
admit that, contrary to all my previous ideas on the subject,
if we’re to judge by what’s been happening these last few
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SUMMER, 1914
days . . He left the phrase unfinished, then went on. ‘It
seems that at the Quai d’Orsay everyone has been counting on
Germany taking a conciliatory line. And now they’re all at
sea. . . . But you were talking about the internationalist move-
ment in Germany, weren’t you?’
‘Yes. In Germany once you get away from the military
milieu, you find a pretty general mistrust of nationalism and the
army. The League for International Conciliation is a very
active organization, and most of the big names of the German
middle class figure on the members’ list. It’s far more influential
than our pacifist societies in France. Also, we shouldn’t forget
that Germany’s a country where we have actually seen a red-
hot militant like Liebknecht, after going to jail for his anti-
militarist propaganda, being elected to the Prussian Landtag,
and, after that, to the Reichstag. Can you imagine a notorious
anti-militarist here in France getting into Parliament, and,
what’s more, making his weight felt there?’
Philip gave some little meditative sniffs.
‘Quite so. Quite. That’s very interesting indeed.’ Abruptly
he went on : ‘I always used to think that now that capital and
credit and big business had become internationalized, now
that the smallest local disturbance has repercussions all over
the world, that here was a new, decisive factor making for
universal peace.’ He smiled, and stroked his beard. ‘That was
one way of looking at it,’ he concluded cryptically.
‘That’s what Jaures thought, and he thinks so still.’
Philip made a wry face.
‘Jaures? And Jaures counts on the influence of the masses
to prevent a war. That’s one way of looking at it, of course.
One can easily picture a mass-impulse of an aggressive form,
an outbreak of war-fever. But a mass-impulse with the kind
of forethought, common sense and firmness needed to maintain
peace — that’s quite another story !
‘Perhaps those who, like myself, have a distaste for war are
prompted au fond by purely personal motives, a congenital,
almost physical aversion from it. The truly scientific view might
well be to regard the destructive impulse as a natural instinct.
Biologists, I fancy, bear that out.’ Again his thought took a
358
SUNDAY, JULY 26
new turning. ‘The funny thing, you know, is that 1 can’t discern
a single one of all the problems Europe’s tangled up in nowadays
— problems it would take years of research to solve — which
there’s the faintest hope of cutting, like a Gordian knot, by a
war. That being so ?’
He broke off with a smile. His remarks never appeared to
chime with what he had j'ust said or heard. There was a
mischievous twinkle in his deep-set eyes; he seemed always
to be telling himself some spicy story the savour of which he
reserved for his private delectation.
‘My father was an officer,’ he went on. ‘He served in all the
campaigns of the Second Empire. I was brought up on military
history. Well, if one takes the trouble to unravel the real causes
of any recent war, one’s always struck by their non-necessity. It’s
very interesting. Looking back at it in perspective, we always
see that it could have been avoided — to all appearances, quite
easily — if two or three statesmen had shown some common
sense and a real wish for peace. And that’s not all. In most
cases, it seems that each of the nations concerned let itself be
stampeded into a state of mistrust and fear, quite groundless
both of them and due to a misunderstanding of the true inten-
tions of the adversary. It’s panic that nine times out of ten sets
nations at each other’s throats.’ He gave a short, crisp laugh
that sounded like a cough. ‘Exactly like a pair of nervous
imbeciles who meet each other in a lonely lane at night, get
panicked, and end up by going for each other — because each
one thinks he’s about to be attacked and prefers taking the
offensive, with all its risks, to remaining in suspense. It’s
comical, really. Just look at Europe now — hag-ridden by fear !
Austria’s afraid of the Slavs, and afraid of losing her prestige.
Russia’s afraid of the Germans and afraid that, if she stays put,
it will be taken as a sign of weakness. Germany’s afraid of a
Cossack invasion, and of being “encircled.” France is afraid of
Germany’s armaments, and Germany is arming only because
she’s afraid, in self-defence. And not one of them will make
the least concession for the sake of peace, because they’re all
afraid of seeming to be afraid.’
‘There’s another thing,’ Jacques suggested. ‘The imperialist
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SUMMER, 1914
Powers deliberately keep up this atmosphere of fear, because it
suits their book, as they well know. Poincare’s policy during
the last few months might be defined as a scientific exploitation
of national alarm.’
Philip had not been listening.
‘The most damnable thing’ — he caught himself up with an
abrupt guffaw — ‘the most comic thing, I mean, is that all the
politicians try to hide this fear behind a parade of noble senti-
ments, and bravado.’
He noticed Antoine coming towards them, and stopped
speaking. With Antoine was a man in the early forties whom
Leon had just shown in.
It was Rumelles.
He cut an imposing figure, forecast by nature to adorn
official functions. His big head was flung well back, as if over-
weighted by the thick shaggy mass of his silvery blond hair.
A short, bushy moustache, the tips of which were jauntily
uptwirled, gave a touch of character to the flat, fleshy features.
His eyes were rather small and sunken, but the china-blue
pupils, restless and alert, lightened the portentous gloom of his
expression with little dancing flames. In a general way,
Rumelles’ face was not lacking in character; it was easy to
foresee that one day it would prove a godsend to some purveyor
of official busts for town-halls in the provinces.
Antoine introduced Rumelles to Philip, and Jacques to
Rumelles. The politician bowed to the old doctor as he would
have bowed to some celebrity of the day. To Jacques he
proffered a courteously friendly hand. He seemed to have taken
as his watchword: For a front-rank man, a simple genial
manner is the thing.
‘There’s no need to tell you, my dear Rumelles, what’s the
burning topic here to-day,’ Antoine said bluntly, placing his
hand on Rumelles’ arm.
‘Obviously, Monsieur Rumelles, as regards the true state of
affairs you have the advantage of us,’ Philip remarked, his gaze
bent quizzingly on Rumelles. ‘Outsiders like ourselves have to
depend on what we read in the newspapers.’
The politician made a non-committal gesture.
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SUNDAY, JULY 26
‘You’re mistaken, Professor, if you think I know much more
about it all than you do.’ He looked round to see if the sally
had drawn appropriate smiles. ‘Still, subject to that reserve,
I don’t think we should take too gloomy a view of the situation.
I’m more inclined to say — indeed I’m bound to say — there are
far more reasons for optimism than for despair.’
‘Good for you !’ Antoine exclaimed.
He had been steering Philip and Rumelles towards the two
chairs placed near the centre of the room, round which the
other guests were grouped.
‘Reasons for optimism?’ the Caliph echoed in a dubious tone.
Rumelles’ blue eyes flashed round the group gathered around
him, before settling on Studler.
‘The situation’s grave. I’ll allow, but it’s no use exaggerating
its gravity.’ He tossed back his head and in the commanding
tones of a statesman whose task it is to hearten a despondent
audience added : ‘Bear well in mind that the factors making
for peace are still in the majority.’
‘What factors, for instance?’ Studler asked.
Rumelles frowned slightly. The Jew’s persistence vexed him;
he felt an undercurrent of ill-will beneath it.
‘What factors, for instance?’ he repeated, as if there were
so many that he had difficulty in choosing. ‘Well, for one thing,
there’s England. The Central Powers have encountered from
the start a vigorous opposition from the Foreign Office.’
‘England !’ Studler broke in. ‘Riots at Belfast ! Street-fighting
in Dublin ! The Buckingham Palace conference a dismal failure !
There’s a regular civil war in the making. Ireland’s like an
arrow planted in England’s back, paralysing her energies.’
‘No more than a thorn in her heel, I assure you.’
Leon appeared at the door.
‘You’re wanted at the ’phone, sir,’ he said to Antoine.
‘Say I’m busy,’ Antoine retorted peevishly.
‘Oh, you needn’t have any fears for England,’ Rumelles
said. ‘If you knew, as I do, the sort of man they have in Sir
Edward Grey; cool, level-headed — a very fine type of states-
man.’ He avoided meeting Studler’s eye and turned towards
Antoine and Philip. ‘Sir Edward’s one of these aristocratic
361 N*
SUMMER, 1914
country gentlemen of the old school who have a very precise
idea of the methods that should be observed in foreign relations.
He deals with the ministers of foreign governments, not through
official channels, but as one gentleman dealing with another.
I know that he was profoundly shocked by the tone of the
ultimatum. You have seen how he took action immediately
and with the greatest firmness, how he remonstrated with
Austria and advised the Servians to act with moderation. The
fate of Europe lies, to some extent, in his hands — it could not
be in better, more trustworthy hands.’
‘But,’ Studler broke in again, ‘Germany has met his sug-
gestions with a point-blank refusal, and in that case . . .’
Rumelles cut in at once.
‘The line taken by Germany, her attitude of cautious, very
comprehensible neutrality, may have held up the first attempts
at mediation made by England. But Sir Edward Grey is
sticking to his guns ! There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you
— it will appear in to-morrow morning’s papers, if not this
evening’s — the Foreign Office is drawing up, in collaboration
with the Quai d’Orsay, a new plan which may very well bring
the conflict to a peaceful issue. Sir Edward is making pro-
posals for a conference to take place immediately in London,
between the German, French and Italian ambassadors, at
which all the matters in dispute will be threshed out.’
‘And meanwhile,’ Studler observed, ‘while all these shilly-
shallyings are going on, Austrian troops are pouring into
Belgrade !’
Rumelles jerked his head up as if he had been stung.
‘I’m afraid, my dear sir, that your information is at fault
on this matter as well. This show of military action notwith-
standing, there’s no proof, so far, that what has happened up
to now is more than window-dressing — as between Austria and
Servia. I suspect you don’t allow sufficient weight to a fact
of capital importance : none of the European governments has
been advised, through diplomatic channels, of a declaration
of war. Another even more striking fact is that the Servian
ambassador to Austria had not left Vienna at noon to-day.
And that’s because he is acting as intermediary in an active
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SUNDAY, JULY 26
exchange of views between the two governments — a very good
sign, you must admit. Negotiations are still in progress. In
any case, even supposing diplomatic relations were broken off,
even if Austria thought fit to declare war, I have reason to
believe that Servia would yield to wiser counsels, and refuse
to embark on an unequal struggle — three hundred thousand
men against a million and a half — and would withdraw her
army without engaging battle. Don’t forget this,’ he added
with a smile, ‘until the guns speak, the last word rests with
the diplomatists.’
Antoine’s eyes met his brother’s and caught a disrespectful
gleam in them; obviously Jacques was not impressed by
Rumelles’ know-all manner.
‘You might find it harder,’ Finazzi ventured to put in, ‘to
take an optimistic view of Germany’s present attitude.’
‘Why should I?’ Rumelles threw a quick, scrutinizing glance
at the oculist. ‘Of course I don’t deny that there are influences
in Germany that make for war; but they’re counterbalanced
by other, weightier influences. The Kaiser’s hasty return —
he’ll be at Kiel to-night — should modify the present trend of
German foreign politics. Everyone knows that the Kaiser will
make a determined stand against the risk of a European war.
All his personal advisers are fervent advocates of peace. And
amongst those of his entourage who have the greatest influence
on him I count Prince Lichnovsky, the German ambassador
at the Court of St. James’s. I had the advantage of seeing a
good deal of him in London some years ago; he is a very
level-headed man, and j'ust now in high favour at the German
Court. You realize, of course, the serious consequences a war
would have for Germany. With her frontiers blockaded she
would literally starve to death. Once the day came when the
Germans could not get supplies of corn and meat from Russia
how could they feed their army of four millions and a population
of sixty-three millions? You can’t keep hungry men alive with
steel and coal and machinery !’
‘What would prevent them buying supplies abroad?’ Studler
suggested.
‘This, my dear sir: they’d have to pay in gold for all they
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SUMMER, 1914
bought, as German paper money would soon lose its purchasing-
power in other countries. Well, it’s an easy calculation; we
know the figures of the German gold-reserve. In a few weeks
Germany would have used up all her gold, and that would
mean starvation.’
Dr. Philip greeted the remark with a little snorting chuckle.
‘Don’t you agree with me. Professor?’ Rumelles asked in
a tone of polite surprise.
‘Of course, of course,’ Philip murmured good-humouredly.
‘Only I can’t help wondering if that isn’t . . . just one way
of looking at it.’
Antoine could not repress a smile. Often in the past he had
heard his ‘Chief’ employ that rather cryptic phrase. ‘That’s
one way of looking at it,’ was Philip’s civil subterfuge for
telling someone he was talking nonsense.
‘What I’ve just said,’ Rumelles went on in a confident tone,
‘is borne out by every expert on the subject. Even the German
economists have recognized that there’s no solution to the
problem of provisioning their country in case of war.’
Roy broke in excitedly.
‘Yes, and that’s why the German General Staff declares that
Germany’s one chance is a lightning victory. If that can be
staved off, even for a few weeks, Germany will be forced to
throw in her hand. That’s common knowledge.’
‘And she can’t be feeling too easy about her allies,’ Dr.
Therivier rumbled in his beard, with a broad grin. ‘Her dear
friend Italy, for instance.’
‘Yes,’ Rumelles agreed, ‘Italy seems quite determined to
stay neutral.’
‘And the Austrian army is — a wash-out!’ Roy exclaimed
with a scornful grimace, and a contemptuous wave of his hand
over his shoulder.
‘Yes, gentlemen I’ Rumelles seemed gratified rather than
otherwise by these interruptions. ‘Don’t let’s exaggerate the
danger ! Listen ! Without divulging any State secret, I think
I may tell you this. At St. Petersburg, at this very hour, an
interview is taking place between the Foreign Minister, M.
Sazonov, and the Austrian ambassador ; an interview of which
364
SUNDAY, JULY 20
great things are hoped. Well, doesn’t the mere fact that a
friendly discussion of this sort has been consented to by both
parties prove a common wish to avoid any recourse to arms?
Then again we know that efforts in favour of peace are being
made by America and by the Pope.’
‘You don’t mean to say so! By the Pope!’ Philip exclaimed
with an air of perfect gravity.
‘Why yes, the Pope!’ Roy echoed. Sitting astride his chair,
his chin propped on his folded arms, he was drinking in
Rumelles’ remarks, not missing a single word.
Philip was careful not to smile, but there was a mischievous
twinkle in his eye.
‘So the Pope is going to save the situation !’ he remarked.
Then added : ‘I’m afraid that, too, is only one way of looking
at it.’
‘Perhaps,’ Rumelles said, ‘there’s more in it than you think.
Professor. A definite veto from His Holiness would be enough
to stop old Francis Joseph from moving, and send the Austrian
army scuttling back behind their frontier. All the legations are
aware of it. At this moment the Vatican is a perfect hotbed
of intrigue. Which group will win? Will the minority in favour
of a war persuade the Pope to keep from making any protest?
Or will the peace-loving majority persuade him to intervene?’
Studler grinned.
‘What a pity we’ve given up having an ambassador at the
Vatican! He might have advised His Holiness to take a peep
at the Gospels for a change !’
This time Philip smiled broadly.
Rumelles observed him with a faint, slightly superior frown.
‘I can see, sir, that you’re sceptical about the influence of
the Pope.’
• ‘The Chief is always sceptical,’ Antoine put in lightly, and
his eyes lingered on his old teacher with a look of affectionate
respect, in which there was a nuance of complicity.
Philip turned towards him, puckering his eyelids roguishly.
‘My dear Antoine,’ he said, ‘I must confess — though it’s
probably a horrid symptom of senile decay — that I find it
harder and harder to form a view about anything. I don’t
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SUMMER, 1914
suppose there’s anything that I’ve heard proved to me, the
opposite of which might not have been proved by somebody
else, on equally conclusive evidence. Perhaps that’s what
you call my “scepticism.” In the present case, however, you’re
quite mistaken. I bow to the superior competence of Monsieur
Rumelles, and I appreciate to the full the force of his arguments.’
‘Still . . .’ Antoine began laughingly.
Philip smiled.
‘Still’ — he rubbed his hands vigorously together — ‘at my age
it’s hard to count on reason vanquishing stupidity. If things have
come to such a pass that peace hangs only on the good sense
of a group of men, well, peace is in a very bad way, that’s
obvious. All the same,’ he went on at once, ‘that’s no reason
for standing by with folded arms. I thoroughly approve of it
if our statesmen are sparing no efforts. . . . That’s the right
way to tackle things — as if there was always something to be
done. It’s our method in medicine; isn’t it, Thibault?’
Manuel Roy was fiddling with his small moustache ; nothing
bored him more than the old professor’s antiquated homilies.
Equally nettled by Philip’s academic scepticism, Rumelles
was looking persistently in Antoine’s direction ; no sooner did
he catch his eye than he made a sign to remind him of the
real object of his visit : the injection.
But just then Manuel Roy turned to Rumelles and blurted
out :
‘The shocking thing is that, if, in spite of all you mention,
the storm should break, France isn’t prepared. It would be
a very different matter if we had first-rate, definitely superior
armaments at our disposal.’
Rumelles bridled up. ‘Who says we’re not prepared?’
‘Well, it seems to me that Humbert’s disclosures in the Senate
three weeks ago were pretty definite.’
Rumelles gave a faint shrug of the shoulders. ‘Oh come now !
Those disclosures, as you call them, made by Monsieur Hum-
bert were common knowledge really ; they’re far from having
the importance lent them by a certain section of the Press.
Surely you aren’t innocent enough to think the French infantry-
man will go to war bare-footed, like the army of the Revolution.’
366
SUNDAY, JULY 26
‘I didn’t refer to their boots. I was thinking of our heavy
artillery, for instance . .
‘Do you know that many experts, and not the least com-
petent, absolutely deny the efficiency of those long-range
guns the Germans are so keen on? It’s like those famous
machine-guns of theirs, cumbrous weapons that slow up the
progress of their infantry.’
‘What exactly is a machine-gun?’ Antoine asked.
Rumelles laughed.
‘It’s a cross between a rifle and that infernal machine Fieschi
invented — do you remember? — which failed so signally to kill
King Louis Philippe. They’re terrifying weapons — on paper,
on a shooting-range. But in the field — that’s another story. It
seems they jam for the least grain of dust.’
Turning to Roy, he went on in a more serious tone.
‘According to our experts, what really counts is field-artillery.
And ours, let me tell you, is vastly superior to the Germans’.
We have more 75’s than they have 77’s, and our 75 is the far
better weapon of the two. Don’t you worry, young man. The
truth is that, during the last three years, France has made
great strides. All the problems of concentration, the working
of our railway system in wartime, and of supplies, have been
solved. If we’ve got to go to war, believe me, France is in an
excellent position. And our Allies are aware of it.’
‘That’s just what makes the danger!’ Studler muttered.
Rumelles’ shot the Caliph a supercilious glance, as if he failed
to see the sense of the remark. It was Jacques who pressed the
point home.
‘It might be better for us, I agree, if Russia did not place
just now too great a confidence in the French army.’
True to his resolve, he had, so far, listened in silence. But
he was chafing under his self-restraint. What seemed to him
the dominating factor — the anti-war movement in the masses —
had not been even touched on. Hastily he took stock of his
feelings and made sure he had self-control enough to maintain
the tone of speculative detachment which seemed the rule
amongst this group. Then he turned to the politician.
‘You were reviewing just now the reasons for not losing
367
SUMMER, 1914
confidence.’ His voice was calm, collected. ‘Don’t you think
we should reckon as one of the main factors that make for
peace, the active opposition of the pacifist groups?’ His eyes
swept Antoine’s face, caught a hint of apprehension on it, then
came back to Rumelles. ‘We shouldn’t forget that at the
present moment there are ten or twelve million internationalists
in Europe who, should the threat of war become more urgent,
are determined to prevent their governments from letting
themselves be drawn into a war.’
Rumelles heard him out without a flicker of the eyelids,
watching the speaker’s face attentively. When he replied, the
studied calmness of his voice did not exclude an undertone
of irony.
‘I am not inclined to attach as much importance as you do
to these mass movements. Further, I’d have you note that the
demonstrations of patriotic enthusiasm in the various capitals
are far more numerous and impressive than the meetings of
protest organized by a handful of objectors. Last night at Berlin
a procession a million strong marched through the city, booed
the Russian Embassy, sang the Wachl am Rhein outside
the palace, and covered the Bismarck Monument with flowers.
Mind you, I don’t deny the existence of certain anti-war parties,
but their activities are purely negative.’
‘Negative !’ Studler cried. ‘No threat of war has ever before
raised such a storm of protest amongst the working-class.’
‘What exactly do you mean by “negative”? ’ Jacques asked
in a calm tone.
‘Well’ — Rumelles paused as if to choose his words — ‘I mean
by “negative” that the parties you refer to, the groups hostile
to any notion of a war, are not large or disciplined enough,
nor — internationally speaking — sufficiently coherent, to form
a force that need be seriously reckoned with.’
‘Twelve million men,’ Jacques repeated.
‘Twelve million men, perhaps, but most of them are merely
people enrolled in some union or other, who pay their con-
tribution to a common fund. How many real, active “militants”
are there amongst them? And even amongst those “militants”
there are a great many who would respond to patriotic
368
SUNDAY, JULY 26
appeals. In some countries, possibly, these revolutionary
parties might be capable of placing certain obstacles in the
way of their governments; but such obstacles would be
merely tentative and, in any case, would have short shrift.
That type of obstruction only lasts as long as the powers that
be permit it. If the situation became critical, the government
involved would only have to put the screw a bit on liberalism
to abate the nuisance, as the lawyers say! It wouldn’t even
be necessary to declare martial law. No, so far, International
Socialism can’t be regarded as a power capable of making any
effective stand against the wishes of a government. And it’s
not in the midst of a crisis that the extremists could fix up
any organized resistance, on the spur of the moment. No,’ he
smiled, ‘it’s too late — for this time anyhow!’
‘Unless,’ Jacques retorted, ‘those elements of opposition,
which lie low when things go well, should, under pressure of
the crisis, be goaded into violent action, and prove invincible !
Just now, don’t you think the outbreak of strikes in Russia
is holding up the Czarist Government?’
‘You’re wrong there,’ Rumelles calmly replied. ‘Let me tell
you, such views are out of date — by twenty-four hours! The
latest despatches are. I’m glad to say, quite definite : the revo-
lutionary movement in St. Petersburg has been crushed —
brutally, but once for all.’
He was still smiling, as if to excuse himself for being per-
petually right. Then, glancing towards Antoine, he raised his
arm, bringing his wrist-watch into prominence.
‘My dear doctor. I’m afraid my time is nearly up.’
‘Right you are,’ said Antoine, rising to his feet.
He was not sorry to see the argument ended thus abruptly,
for he feared Jacques’ reactions.
While Rumelles was bidding good-bye to those present with
studied courtesy, Antoine went up to his brother, taking an
envelope from his pocket.
‘Here’s the letter for the lawyer. I’ve not closed the envelope.
Well, what did you think of Rumelles?’ he added in an absent-
minded tone.
‘He looks his part,’ Jacques answered with a smile.
369
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine seemed preoccupied with some thought he was
reluctant to express. After a quick glance round to make sure
there was no one within hearing, he said hastily, lowering his
voice, in a would-be detached tone :
‘By the way — supposing there’s a war? You’ve been excused
your military service, haven’t you? But — if there’s a mobiliza-
tion . . .?’
Jacques gazed at him for a moment without answering. It
had just struck him that Jenny was sure to ask the same question.
Then he rapped out his reply.
‘I’ll never let myself be mobilized.’
Antoine, feeling ill at ease, had kept his eyes fixed on
Rumelles; he did not seem to have heard the remark.
The brothers parted without exchanging another word.
17
Sunday, July 26
RUMELLES CONFESSES TO ANTOINE HIS APPREHENSIONS OF A WAR
‘Those hypodermic injections of yours are simply mar-
vellous,’ Rumelles observed as soon as they were alone together.
‘I already feel ever so much better. It’s no longer such an
eflFort to get up in the morning, and my appetite’s coming
back.’
‘No fever of an evening? No fits of giddiness?’
‘None whatever.’
‘In that case we can safely increase the dose.’
The walls of the room they entered, next the consulting-
room, were tiled in white porcelain. There was an operating
table in the middle, and on this Rumelles stretched himself
submissively after taking off his coat and waistcoat.
370
SUNDAY, JULY 26
Antoine stood beside the sterilizer, with his back turned,
preparing the injection.
‘What you say is pretty encouraging,’ he remarked in a
pensive voice.
Rumelles glanced round, wondering if the allusion was to
the state of his health or to the political situation.
‘That being so,’ Antoine proceeded, ‘why do they let the
papers keep harping on Germany’s alleged double-dealing and
her aggressive designs?’
‘They don’t “let them,” they encourage them to do so. It’s up
to us, you see, to prepare public opinion for every emergency.’
He spoke in a gloomy tone of voice. When Antoine turned
towards him, Rumelles had laid aside his cock-sure expression.
There was a strained, far-away look in his eyes.
‘To prepare public opinion?’ Antoine repeated. ‘They’ll
never make the country believe that the interests of Servia
should be allowed to involve us in serious complications.’
‘Public opinion!’ Rumelles exclaimed with a contemptuous
grimace. ‘My dear man, with a little gumption and a judicious
selection of the news permitted to leak out, three days would
be enough for us to bring about a complete revulsion of feeling
in either direction I The majority of the French people, moreover,
have always felt flattered by the Franco-Russian Alliance.
It would be easy to play upon that chord again.’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Antoine remarked as he drew
nearer.
With a wad steeped in ether, he swabbed the place for the
injection, and with a quick stab thrust the needle deep into
the muscle. Silently he watched the level of the liquid sinking
in the syringe. At last he withdrew the needle.
‘The French,’ he went on, ‘welcomed the Franco-Russian
Alliance enthusiastically, but this is the first time they’ve been
called upon to ask themselves how far they are committed. . . .
Don’t get up for a minute or two. ... I often wonder what there
really is in our treaties with Russia. No one knows anything
about it.’
It was a roundabout way of asking a question, but Rumelles
answered readily enough.
371
SUMMER, 1914
‘I’m not in the secrets of the gods,’ he said, propping himself
on his elbow. ‘All I really know is departmental hearsay. There
were two preliminary Agreements, in 1891 and 1892, and after
that a regular Treaty of Alliance which Casimir Perier signed
in 1894. I’m not acquainted with all its terms, but — this is not
a State secret — France and Russia are pledged to give each
other military assistance in the event of either being threatened
by Germany. Since then we’ve had M. Delcasse, we’ve had
M. Poincare and his trips to Russia. All of which must obviously
have defined and emphasized our commitments.’
‘That being so,’ Antoine observed, ‘if Russia were now to
intervene against the German policy, it would be Russia
threatening Germany, and under the treaty we shouldn’t be
bound to come in.’
Rumelles made a fleeting grimace intended for a smile.
‘It’s not so simple as all that, my dear fellow,’ he said.
‘Supposing Russia, as the out and out champion of the Southern
Slavs, were to break with Austria to-morrow and mobilize in
defence of Servia, Germany, being bound by her treaty of 1879
with Austria, would have to mobilize against Russia. The mere
fact of that mobilization would oblige France to implement
her pledge to Russia and mobilize immediately against Ger-
many, as threatening our Ally. One thing follows the other,
automatically.’
‘So, according to you, that precious Franco-Russian friend-
ship, which our politicians prided themselves upon as a guaran-
tee of security, now proves to work in the opposite direction.
To be not a guarantee of peace, but an instrument of war!’
‘It’s all very well to blame the politicians. . . . But remember
what France’s situation in Europe was in i8go. Was it a mistake
for our statesmen to give their country a weapon that cuts
both ways, rather than leave her entirely defenceless?’
The argument struck Antoine as being a piece of special
pleading, but he found no ready answer to it. His knowledge
of contemporary history was very sketchy. And, besides, all
this was only of retrospective interest.
‘Be that as it may,’ he observed, ‘at the moment, if I under-
stand you properly, our fate is entirely in the hands of Russia.
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SUNDAY, JULY 26
Or to be more precise,’ he added after a moment’s hesitation,
‘everything depends on our loyalty to the Franco-Russian
Agreement. Is that right?’
Rumelles again gave a brief, sub-acid smile.
‘As to that, my dear fellow, don’t bamboozle yourself into
imagining we could wriggle out of our obligations. It’s Berthelot,
j’ust now, who’s in charge of our foreign policy. So long as he
remains in office, with M. Poincare behind him, you may be
sure our loyalty to our Allies can ndver be in doubt.’ He hesi-
tated, then went on: ‘This was made quite clear. I’m told,
at the Cabinet Council held after Von Schoen’s unspeakable
proposal.’
‘In that case,’ Antoine exclaimed testily, ‘if there’s no chance
of shaking off our Russian incubus, the only thing to do is to
compel Russia to remain neutral.’
‘How do you propose to do that?’ Rumelles asked, his blue
eyes fixed on Antoine. ‘And anyhow, how do we know it’s not
too late?’ he muttered.
There was a short silence before he spoke again.
‘In Russia, the military party is all-powerful. The drubbing
they received in the Japanese War has left the Russian staff
with an itch for getting their own back on someone, and they’ve
never forgotten the rap over the knuckles Austria gave them
when she annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. People like M.
Isvolski — who, by the way, is due to arrive in Paris this after-
noon — make little attempt to conceal the fact that they want
a European war, so as to be able to shift the Russian frontier
right down to Constantinople. It would suit their book to
postpone that war until Franz Joseph’s death, and if possible
till 1917, but obviously, if an opportunity arose before . . .’
He spoke quickly, breathlessly, and his look grew suddenly
downcast. An anxious frown settled on his brows. It was as if
he had cast off the mask at last.
‘Yes, my dear chap, frankly. I’m beginning to despair. Just
now, in the presence of your friends, I of course had to put
up a bold front. But the truth is, things are looking black.
So black, indeed, that the Foreign Minister’s given up the idea
of travelling on to Denmark with the President and is returning
373
SUMMER, 1914
post-haste to France. The midday despatches haven’t improved
prospects. Instead of falling in with Sir Edward Grey’s sug-
gestions, Germany does nothing but quibble, raise frivolous
objections, and seems bent on scuttling the proposal for arbi-
tration. Does she really want to bring things to a head, or is
it that she objects to a conference of the four Great Powers
because she knows beforehand that, owing to the strained
relations between Austria and Italy, Austria would inevitably
be condemned in such a Uourt by a majority of three to one?
The latter is the least invidious as well as the more likely
supposition. But meanwhile events are moving fast. Military
precautions are already being taken everywhere.’
‘Military precautions?’
‘That was inevitable. Every nation inevitably has in mind
the possibility of mobilization and is preparing for it, on the
off chance. In Belgium an extraordinary Cabinet meeting has
been held this very day, with Monsieur de Broqueville in the
chair ; it has all the appearances of a precautionary Council of
War. It’s proposed to call up three batches of conscripts so as
to be able to have an additional hundred thousand men in the
firing line. With us it’s the same story. At the Quai d’Orsay,
this morning, a Cabinet Council was held, at which, as a
measure of precaution, the advisability of preparing for war
was considered. At Toulon and Brest the Fleet has been ordered
to stand by. Instructions have been cabled to Morocco for fifty
battalions of native troops to be shipped to France immediately.
And so forth. Every Government is taking the same line, and
that’s how the situation is growing worse and worse auto-
matically. For there’s not an expert on the Staff but knows
that when once you’ve started off that infernal machinery of
general mobilization, it becomes a physical impossibility to
slow down the process and wait upon events. Thus the most
peacefully minded of governments are confronted with a terrible
dilemma; either they embark on a war, for the simple reason
that they’ve been preparing for it, or else ..."
‘Why not issue counter-orders, throw the gears into reverse,
and put a stop to the whole business?’
‘Quite so. But in that case you must be absolutely certain
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SUNDAY, JULY 26
that you won’t have to mobilize again for many months to
come. . .
‘Why?’
‘Because — and this is another axiom never called in question
by the experts — a sudden stoppage jams every cog-wheel of
the intricate war-machine and puts it out of commission for
months. What Government, I ask you, can feel certain just now
that there’ll be no need to mobilize in the immediate future?’
Antoine remained speechless, gazing at Rumelles in dismay.
At last he said under his breath :
‘It’s a damnable business !’
‘And the worst of it is that underneath the surface there may
be nothing more than a colossal gamble. What’s going on in
Europe at present may be no more than a gigantic game of
poker, with every player trying to put through a bluff. While
Austria’s strangling treacherous Servia on the side, big brother
Germany takes a blustering attitude, for no other purpose, may
be, than to forestall Russian action and a conciliatory inter-
vention on the part of the Powers. Just like poker. The fellow
who keeps up the stoutest and the longest bluff takes the pool.
The trouble is that, as at poker, no one can tell just what
proportion of trickery and what of genuine aggressive intent
there may be at the moment in Germany’s attitude or in that
of Russia. Hitherto the Russians have always given way to
German effrontery. So of course Germany and Austria think
themselves justified in assuming that, provided they put up
a good bluff, provided they seem determined to go the limit,
Russia will climb down. But then again it may be that just
because she has always had to give way, Russia may really
throw her sword into the scales this time.’
‘A damnable business,’ Antoine repeated. Gloomily he placed
the syringe he was holding in the sterilizer; then took a few
steps towards the window. Confronted with Rumelles’ descrip-
tion of the European scene, he felt all the mental anguish of
a passenger who in the midst of a cyclone should suddenly
discover that all the ship’s officers had taken leave of their
senses.
A pause fell on their conversation.
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SUMMER, 1914
Rumelles had risen to his feet. He was buttoning his braces.
Unconsciously he looked round, as though to make sure of not
being overheard, and moved a step nearer to Antoine.
‘Look here, Thibault,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘I oughtn’t
to disclose these matters, but you as a doctor can keep a secret,
I suppose.’
He looked Antoine squarely in the eyes; Antoine nodded
without a word.
‘Well, what’s going on in Russia is just unthinkable! His
Excellency Monsieur Sazonov has as good as warned us in
advance that his Government means to turn down any attempt
at mediation. And as a matter of fact we have just received
extremely grave news from St. Petersburg. Russia’s intentions
are no longer a matter of doubt. Mobilization over there is
already in full swing. The summer manoeuvres have been cut
short, the troops have returned post-haste to their garrisons;
in the four chief Russian Commands — Moscow, Kief, Kazan
and Odessa — every regiment is on a war footing. It was yester-
day, the 25th, or perhaps even the day before, at a Council of
War, that the Staff managed to extort from the Czar written
orders to prepare in all haste, “as a preventive measure,” for
an attack on Austria. Of this Germany is undoubtedly aware
and it’s quite enough to account for the way she is behaving.
She too is mobilizing secretly, and she is, I fear, only too well
justified in doing so. What’s more, she has just taken a step
of the gravest importance. She has warned St. Petersburg pub-
licly to-day that unless these military preparations of Russia’s
are at once cut short — and all the more, of course, should they
be speeded up — she will feel obliged to decree her own mobiliza-
tion. And that, as she says in good set terms, would mean a
world war. What will Russia’s answer be? Her responsibility is
heavy enough already, but it will be crushing if she declines
to give way. And it’s unlikely, to say the least of it, that she
will give way.’
‘But what of us, meanwhile?’
‘What of us, my dear fellow? What of us? What would you
have us do? Let Russia down? That would merely demoralize
our own public opinion on the very eve of the day when we
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SUNDAY, JULY 26
shall Stand in need of all our strength, of all our national
enthusiasm. Let Russia down? And stand entirely alone?
Quarrel with our one and only Ally? Make England turn away
in disgust from the Franco- Russian combination, and compel
her Government to declare in favour of the Central Powers?’
Two gentle taps at the door cut him short. Leon’s voice was
heard in the passage outside :
‘You’re wanted again on the telephone, sir.’
Antoine made an impatient gesture.
‘Say I’m . . . No !’ he called out, ‘I’ll answer it myself’
And, turning to Rumelles : ‘You’ll excuse me, won’t you?’
‘By all means, my dear doctor. Besides, it’s shockingly late,
I must be going. Good-bye.’
Antoine hastened to his study and unhooked the receiver.
‘Well, what is it?’
The harshness of his tone gave Anne a shock.
‘Sorry,’ she said contritely. ‘I’d forgotten it was Sunday. I
suppose you’ve friends with you this afternoon.’
‘Well, what is it?’ he repeated.
‘I only wanted . . . Sure I’m not disturbing you?’
Antoine made no reply.
‘I wanted . . . !’ She felt his nerves so savagely on edge that
she floundered for her words, could not concoct a lie.
Timidly, finding nothing better to say, she whispered :
‘To-night?’
‘Quite impossible,’ he replied curtly. Then added in a gentler
tone : ‘Nothing doing to-night, darling, I’m afraid.’
Suddenly he felt sorry for her. At the other end of the line
Anne somehow grew aware of his changed mood, with a little
thrill of mingled pain and pleasure.
‘Do be reasonable !’ he said. (She could hear him sigh.) ‘For
one thing, I’m not free. And even if I was, I wouldn’t feel like
a festive evening, considering the state of things.’
. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Really, Anne, you read the papers, don’t you? Surely you
know what’s happening?’
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SUMMER, 1914
She stiffened up. The papers? Politics? Was he thrusting her
out of his life for such futilities . . . ? She jumped to the con-
clusion that he was lying.
‘To-night, at our place — really, really can’t you manage it?’
‘No. I probably shan’t get home till late — dead-beat, what’s
more. It’s quite true, darling. Please don’t insist.’ He added
rather lamely: ‘To-morrow, very likely. I’ll ring you up to-
morrow, if I can. Au revoir, Anne dear.’
Without waiting, he hung up.
18
Sunday^ July 26
JACQUES’ FIRST VISIT TO JENNY AT HER MOTHER’S FLAT
JA c QU E s had left without waiting for his brother to reappear.
Indeed, when the Fontanins’ concierge told him Miss Jenny
had been back for over an hour, he regretted having wasted
so much of his time on Antoine’s friends.
He ran up the stairs, three steps at a time, and rang the bell.
With a wildly beating heart he listened for the sound of Jenny’s
steps behind the door ; but it was her voice that he heard first.
‘Who is it?’
‘Jacques.’
There was a rattle of bolts and chains and at last the door
opened.
‘Mother has left Paris,’ she said, to account for the locked
door. ‘I’ve just been seeing her off’
She lingered in the doorway as if, now she had to let him
enter, she were feeling ill at ease. But then he gazed into her
eyes with such frank delight, such loyalty, that all her qualms
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SUNDAY, JULY 26
were dust before the wind. He had come to see her, yesterday’s
dream was continuing to-day !
He held out both arms towards her with unthinking fervour,
and with the same spontaneity she gave him both her hands.
Then stepping back two paces, her hands still clasped in his,
she drew him across the threshold.
While waiting for Jacques’ coming she had wondered into
which room to show him. The drawing-room was submerged
in dust-sheets and she always felt scruples about taking anyone
into her bedroom; it was her place of refuge, her sanctum,
and even Daniel rarely entered it. The only other rooms avail-
able were Daniel’s and Madame de Fontanin’s; the latter was
the one in which she and her mother usually sat. Finally Jenny
had decided for her brother’s room.
‘Let’s go to Daniel’s den,’ she said. ‘It’s the only cool place
in the flat.’
As she had not yet bought a mourning costume in light
material, she wore in the flat an old white serge summer frock,
open at the neck, which carried a suggestion of vernal lawns,
open-air games. Though she had small hips and long, slim legs
she did not give an impression of being particularly supple,
for instinctively she held herself in and walked with calculated
stiffness ; yet all the same, for all her self-restraint, the litheness
of youth showed through in every movement of her slender
body.
As he followed Jenny, Jacques’ attention strayed ; he could
not keep himself from gazing with emotion at this well-remem-
bered setting: the hall with its Dutch cupboard and the Delft
plates above each doorway; the grey corridor wall on which
Madame de Fontanin had hung her son’s first charcoal sketches ;
the cupboard with a red window which the children had
used as a dark-room; and Daniel’s room, his bookshelves, his
old alabaster clock and the two little armchairs upholstered
in dark red velvet, in which he and his friend had so often
talked the hours away.
‘Mother left this afternoon.’ To hide her shyness, Jenny
busied herself pulling up the blind. ‘She’s gone to Vienna.’
‘Where?’
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SUMMER, 1914
‘To Vienna. Do sit down.’ She turned, but failed to notice
Jacques’ consternation.
On the previous night, to her surprise, she had not been
asked to explain why she was so late. Madame de Fontanin
had been too busy getting things ready for her journey — she had
not dared to start packing while Daniel was about — to look
at the clock during her daughter’s absence. So Jenny had not
needed to give any explanations ; it was her mother who, rather
ashamed at having kept it back so long, had hastily confessed
that she was leaving for ten days — to ‘settle things’ on the spot.
‘To Vienna!’ Jacques repeated, without sitting down. ‘And
you didn’t try to stop her?’
Jenny gave him an outline of the conversation, explaining
how, when she began to raise objections, her mother had cut her
short and insisted that a personal visit to Vienna was the one
way of straightening out the tangle their affairs were in.
Jacques’ eyes rested affectionately on her face while she was
speaking. She was sitting at Daniel’s desk, holding herself very
straight, with a calm, rather aloof expression. The set of her
mouth, the lips that hardly parted (‘too schooled to silence’
was Jacques’ thought), indicated firmness of will and self-
composure. There was something rather strained in her whole
demeanour, and in her watchful gaze a stubborn reticence.
Was it pride, he wondered, or mistrust? Or was it only shyness?
No, none of these, he decided, for he knew her well enough
to recognize that stiffness as habitual with her; it expressed
one side of her temperament, the self-imposed reserve that had
become for her a second nature.
He had qualms about telling her point-blank the reasons
why a stay in Austria was ill-advised at the moment, and
prudently enquired :
‘Did your brother know she was planning this trip?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, that explains it!’ He had suddenly decided to speak
out. ‘Daniel would have put his foot down if he’d known. I’m
certain. Doesn’t your mother know that Austria is mobilizing,
that the frontiers are under military surveillance, that martial
law may be declared in Austria at any moment?’
380
SUNDAY, JULY 26
It was Jenny’s turn to show consternation. For the past week
she had hardly glanced at a newspaper. In a few words Jacques
explained what had been happening.
He spoke circumspectly, taking care to keep to actual facts,
without alarming her unduly. The questions she put him
evinced a trace of incredulity and brought it home to him how
little such political preoccupations entered into her life. The
possibility of a war, one of those wars described in history-
books, seemed to present no terrors to her, or next to none.
It did not even enter her head that, if war broke out, Daniel
would from the outset be in serious danger. All that troubled
her was the thought of the inconveniences to which her mother
might be exposed.
‘It’s quite likely,’ Jacques hastened to explain, ‘that Madame
de Fontanin will give up her plan before she reaches the
frontier. You may see her back here at any moment.’
‘At any moment!’ she exclaimed, colouring up.
She confessed to him that, truth to tell, she had felt rather
relieved by her mother’s departure ; it put back the trying hour
of explanations. Not, she hastened to explain, that she feared
encountering her mother’s disapproval. But there was nothing
she disliked more than having to talk about herself, to lay
bare her inmost feelings.
‘Don’t forget, Jacques,’ she said, with an earnest look towards
him. ‘Where my feelings are concerned, I like people to read
between the lines.’
‘So do I !’ Jacques laughed.
The conversation took a more intimate turn. He questioned
her about herself, urged her to give details, helped her to
analyse her sentiments. She submitted to it readily enough,
and did not j'ib at his questions. Gradually, indeed, she came
to feel a sort of gratitude to him for having put them. To her
surprise she found a certain pleasure in casting off, for his sake,
her wonted reticence. For, until that day, no one had ever
gazed at her with such compelling fervour in his eyes ; no one
had even spoken to her with such care not to hurt her feelings,
with so obvious a will to understand. She felt a gentle warmth,
unknown till now, stealing over her ; it was as if hitherto she
381
SUMMER, 1914
had led a cloistered life and suddenly the barriers had fallen,
discovering a radiant, undreamt-of landscape.
At every moment, for no reason, Jacques would smile, not
so much for Jenny’s benefit, as with inward joy. He was still
quite dazed with happiness; Europe had vanished from his
thoughts, nothing existed now but he and she. Everything
that Jenny said, the most trivial remark, seemed another token
of her trust and faithfulness, thrilling him with a sense of bound-
less gratitude. A new conviction was striking root in his mind,
filling him with pride: their love was not merely something
rare and precious, but an adventure without precedent ; more
than exceptional — unique. The word ‘soul’ rose to their lips
time after time, and, each time, that vague, mysteriously
emotive word seemed to rouse answering echoes, charged with
overtones of meaning, secrets unguessed by any but themselves.
‘Do you know what surprises me most?’ he suddenly ex-
claimed. ‘It’s that I feel so little surprise. I feel as if, deep down
in me, I’d always, always known this was to happen.’
‘I’m not surprised, either.’
It was equally untrue for both of them; yet the more they
thought about it, the more they grew convinced that never
for a single day had either abandoned hope.
‘And I find it so natural, my being here,’ he went on. ‘I’ve
the impression, at your side, of being in my ordinary, appointed
place.’
‘So have L’
For both of them it was a delicious temptation, to which
they yielded at every moment, to feel themselves in unison,
to declare themselves at one in everything.
She had moved to another chair and was sitting now in
front of him in an almost languorous attitude. Already love
seemed to be changing her whole appearance, making itself
visible in her bearing, lending her a grace, an ease that she
had never had before. Jacques watched the transformation
with enchanted eyes. His gaze lingered like a caress on the play
of shadows on her neck and shoulders, the ripple of the muscles
under the light frock, the rise and fall of her breast. And he
could never feast his eyes enough on the charming picture
382
SUNDAY, JULY 20
offered by her slender hands restlessly fluttering like two white
amorous doves; nestling together, drawing apart, hovering till
they locked again. She had small, round, amply moulded nails
— ‘like half-kernels of hazel-nuts,’ he told himself.
He bent towards her.
‘Do you know. I’m discovering lots of most wonderful things !’
‘What things?’
Listening, she had rested her elbow on the arm of the chair
and propped her chin on the palm of her right hand, her
fingers cupping the curve of her cheek ; sometimes her forefinger
idly toyed with her lips, then again strayed upward to her brows.
He brought his eyes near hers.
‘Do you know, by daylight your pupils look exactly like two
tiny sparkling jewels, pale blue sapphires?’
With an embarrassed smile she bent her head. Then straigh-
tening up again, she returned his scrutiny, and, as if teasingly
to turn the tables, began studying his appearance with no less
care.
‘And it seems to me, Jacques, you’ve changed since yes-
terday.’
‘Changed?’
‘Yes. A lot !’
She seemed disposed to keep her secret to herself and it was
only after he had plied her with questions that, by way of
shy approximations and phrases timidly let fall, he elicited
what she had not dared to say openly: ever since Jacques had
come she had been feeling that something was weighing on his
mind, something that had nothing to do with their love.
With a quick gesture he pushed back the lock of hair that
was dangling on his forehead.
‘Listen !’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll tell you exactly how I’ve spent
my time since yesterday.’
He described to her his night in the Tuileries Gardens, his
morning at the newspaper offiee, his visit to Antoine, adding
detail to detail, with the novelist’s delight in drawing an apt
picture of scenes and people. He retailed what Stefany and
Gallot, what Philip and Rumelles had said, and explained his
own reactions. He told her of his fears and hopes, and tried
383
SUMMER, 1914
to give her an idea of the part he was playing in the struggle
to avert a war.
She listened breathlessly, without missing a word, but feeling
hopelessly at sea. It was as if she were plunged headlong not
merely into the midst of Jacques’ existence but into the vortex
of the European crisis, and confronted with terrifying issues such
as she had never dreamed of. The whole social structure seemed
to be tottering, and a feeling of panic came over her, the panic
of those who, in an earthquake, see tumbling about their
ears the walls and roofs which had seemed until now so safe
and solid.
She gathered only a partial impression of the part that
Jacques was actually playing in what had been to her till to-day
an unknown world, but she felt bound to assign him an exalted
place, to justify her love. She felt assured that his aims were
lofty and that the men whom he mentioned by name — men
like Meynestrel, Stefany and Jaures — were worthy of excep-
tional esteem. Their ideals must be praiseworthy — since they
were Jacques’ ideals, too.
Jenny’s attention was like strong wine to Jacques; he let
himself go whole-heartedly.
‘Revolutionists like us . . .’ he said.
She looked up quickly ; he caught a gleam of wonder in her
eyes.
It was the first time she had heard ‘revolutionists’ spoken of
in an approving tone, with an almost religious deference. The
term had always conjured up to her pictures of a ruffianly
mob out to burn and pillage the homes of the rich, so as to
gratify their basest instincts; of desperadoes with bombs con-
cealed beneath their coats, to cope with whom society’s one
arm was stern repression.
Jacques began to speak to her of socialism, and his reasons
for joining the Socialist International.
‘Don’t imagine it was an impulse of blind philanthropy that
swept me into the revolutionary movement. No, I went through
a long phase of doubts, of spiritual loneliness — a terrible time !
In the old days when you knew me, I firmly believed in human
brotherhood, the victory of truth and justice, but I had then
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SUNDAY, JULY 20
the notion that they would triumph easily and quickly. A fool’s
paradise, as I very soon found out, and then everything seemed
to go dark inside me. That was the most appalling period of
my life ; I let myself sink, I touched the lowest depth of despair.
Well, it was the revolutionary ideal that saved me then.’ With
a rush of gratitude he remembered Meynestrel. ‘That ideal
broadened my horizon — radiantly ! It gave the futile, undis-
ciplined youngster I’d been from my schooldays on, a motive
for living. I realized that it was absurd to fancy justice would
triumph easily or quickly — but that there was a practical
way of showing my belief in the triumph of justice, that my
instinct of revolt might serve a useful purpose, if it joined forces
with other rebellious spirits like mine for the betterment of
mankind.’
She listened without interrupting. In any case her Protestant
upbringing had predisposed her to the notion that the social
system should not be cramped by rules of strict convention,
and that it is the duty of the individual to exalt his personality,
carrying to its utmost consequences any line of action that his
conscience bids him follow. Behind Jenny’s silence he dis-
cerned the workings of a keenly alert intelligence, sound and
well-balanced, though, naturally enough, unused to tackling
speculative problems. She could, he felt, rise clear of prejudices,
and under her reserve was a highly strung, sensitive nature
that would readily espouse and serve a noble cause, once she
had judged it worthy of her life’s devotion.
Nevertheless she could not repress an incredulous, almost
disapproving glance when Jacques proceeded to inform her
that the capitalist system under which in all innocence she
lived, was a consecration of the most heinous injustice. Though
she had not thought much about it, she accepted the inequalities
of the human lot as a natural outcome of the inequalities of
human nature.
‘Oh Jenny,’ Jacques exclaimed, ‘I’m sure you have no idea
what it’s really like, the life of the world’s under-dogs ! If you
had, you wouldn’t shake your head like that. You don’t realize
that quite near you there are thousands and thousands of
miserable people whose lives are a never-ending round of toil,
385
o
SUMMER, 1914
who bow their necks beneath an iron yoke without a decent
livelihood, without security for the future, without a gleam of
hope ! You know that coal is dug out of the earth, that goods
are made in factories ; but do you ever think about the millions
of men who spend their lives half suffocated in the darkness
of the mines? Do you think of the men whose nerves are worn
to tatters by the ear-splitting din of factory machines? Or even
of those relatively favoured workers in the country who drudge
their lives out for anything up to fourteen hours a day, according
to the season, only to sell the produce of their never-ending
toil to some middleman who haggles over every penny? That’s
what it means, a working man’s life.
‘Don’t think I’m exaggerating ; I speak of what I’ve seen with
my own eyes. At Hamburg, to keep myself alive, I had to work
as a dock-hand, with a hundred other poor devils in the same
plight as myself— starving, that’s to say. For three weeks I was
at the beck and call of those modern slave-drivers they call
“foremen,” bawling at us, “Lift that there plank, you ! Carry
those bags ! Get a move on with them barrows, blast you !”
from morn till night. When the day’s work was over and we’d
drawn our scanty pay, we flung ourselves like wolves on food
and strong drink ; every limb was aching, we were covered with
filth, our bodies empty, our minds empty, we were too fagged
out even to rebel against it all. That, perhaps, is the most
horrible thing about it : these poor devils haven’t an idea that
they are the victims of social injustice. The marvel is how they
bring themselves to endure, as if it were the normal thing, a
life that’s horrible as a convict’s. I managed to escape from
that hell-on-earth because I had the luck of knowing several
languages, and could turn my hand to journalism. But what
about the others? They’re still sweating their souls out for a
pittance. . . . Have we the right, Jenny, to allow things like that
to go on, to regard them as the normal lot of our fellow-men?
‘Or take the factories ! I worked at Fiume for a spell as
machine-minder in a button-factory. I was the slave of a
machine that had to be fed incessantly, every ten seconds.
Impossible to take one’s mind, or hands, off it for a single
minute. For hours on end we went on making the same move-
386
SUNDAY, JULY 26
merit. It wasn’t really tiring, I’ll admit. But I assure you, I
felt rottener mentally and physically after a spell at that
machine than I’d ever felt at Hamburg after handling sacks
of cement all day, with the lime-dust burning my eyes and
throat. In an Italian soap-works I’ve seen women whose job
it was to lift and carry every ten minutes cases of soap-flakes
weighing eighty pounds; for the rest of the time they had to
turn a handle which was so stiff they had to get a purchase
with their feet against a wall, to set it in motion. And they
put in eight hours a day at that back-breaking job. I’m not
inventing anything, you know! I’ve seen with my own eyes,
at a Prussian furrier’s, girls of seventeen employed on brushing
skins, who had to go out every few hours and vomit because
their throats got full of hairs. Miserably paid, they were, what’s
more. Of course that’s the rule everywhere : women are always
paid less than men for the same work.’
‘Why?’ Jenny asked.
‘Because it’s assumed a woman has a father or a husband
who contributes to her keep.’
‘That’s quite true, very often,’ she said.
‘No, worse luck ! If these wretched women are obliged to
work, isn’t it just because, under our present social system, a
man can’t earn enough to give a decent life to those dependent
on him?
‘I’ve been telling you about workers in foreign countries.
As for France, you’ve only got to go one morning to any of the
industrial suburbs. You’ll see, a little before seven, a long file of
women coming to leave their children at the public creche, so
as to be free to work all day at a factory. The factory managers
who have organized these creches — at the cost of the business —
are convinced, quite genuinely I expect, that they’re doing a
kindness to their employees. But try to picture what it’s like,
the life of a mother who, before putting in her eight-hour day
of manual toil, has got to be up at five to make the coffee, wash
and dress her children, tidy up the room a bit, and hurry to
her work at seven. Isn’t that absolutely scandalous? But, I
assure you, that’s how it is. And the capitalist system battens
on those martyred lives. Tell me, Jenny — can we allow such
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SUMMER, 1914
things to be? Can we permit the system to go on thriving at
the cost of all those millions of victims? Certainly not!
But to bring in a new order, the proletariat must take over.
J^ow do you understand? That’s the real meaning of the word
which seems to frighten you so much, of “Revolution.” What’s
wanted is a brand-new social system enabling men not merely
to exist, but to live. We must give back to the individual not
only his rightful share of the profits of industry, but the measure
of liberty, well-being, leisure, without which he can’t develop
in an atmosphere of decent human self-respect.’
‘Of human self-respect,’ she repeated pensively.
She was realizing, now for the first time, that she had
reached her twentieth year in utter ignorance of the underworld
of labour. Between the working-class and a young 1914 bour-
geoise like herself, the wall of class was as impervious as the
caste barriers in certain ancient civilizations. Still, she reflected
naively, all rich people aren’t monsters of iniquity ! She recalled
the Protestant organizations to which her mother belonged
and which dispensed charity to needy families. And now she
blushed at the thought of it. Charity. She realized that those
poor folk who asked for alms had nothing in common with
the exploited working-class, who claimed their right to live,
their right to independence, self-respect. Those plaintive
paupers did not represent the ‘lower class,’ as she had stupidly
imagined. They were only parasites, hangers-on of the pros-
perous middle class — almost as far removed from the proletariat
Jacques had spoken of, as from the kindly ‘district visitors’
befriending them. Jacques had made known to her the
proletariat.
‘Human self-respect,’ she repeated for the second time and
her tone showed she gave the words their fullest meaning.
‘Of course,’ Jacques said, ‘the start-off is bound to be dis-
appointing. The worker, once the revolution has set him free,
will, to begin with, make a dead set at the most selfish, not to
say the basest forms of satisfaction. We’ll have to reckon with
that, I fear; men’s lower instincts will need to be appeased
before any real spiritual progress is feasible.’ After a moment’s
hesitation he added : ‘Before their souls become enlightened.’
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SUNDAY, JULY 26
His voice had grown husky ; an apprehension which he knew
only too well gripped his throat. Nevertheless he went on
speaking.
‘Yes, I’m afraid we shall have to bow to the inevitable; the
change of institutions will precede by far man’s change of
heart. But it wouldn’t do — we haven’t the right — to lose faith in
human nature. I see its flaws quite clearly. But I believe — I
must believe — that they’re largely consequences of the present
social order. Yes, we should close our ears to the insidious voice
of pessimism, we must learn to believe in Man. There is, there
surely must be, in Man a secret, ineradicable craving for what is
noblest. And it’s our task to fan that failing spark of aspiration
hidden beneath the embers till it glows and bursts perhaps one
day into a splendid flame.’
She nodded emphatically; her expression was more decided
than ever, her eyes were still and wide.
He beamed with satisfaction.
‘But the social changes will have to wait; for the moment
we’ve a more urgent work to hand ; to prevent war.’
Suddenly he remembered his appointment with Stefany and
glanced at the alabaster clock. It was not going. He pulled out
his watch, and j'umped up hastily.
‘Good heavens, it’s eight !’ He seemed to waken from a dream.
‘And I’m due at the Bourse in a quarter of an hour’s time.’
It struck him that their conversation had taken an unexpec-
tedly impersonal turn, and fearing it might have disappointed
Jenny, began to murmur excuses.
‘No, no!’ she broke in at once. ‘I want to hear your views
on eyery subject, I want to know your life — to understand I’
The fervour of her tone seemed to imply : By thus confiding in
me, by showing yourself to me exactly as you are, you’ve
given me the best possible proof of your love, the proof I
most appreciate.
‘To-morrow,’ he said as he moved towards the door, ‘I’ll
come earlier. Immediately after lunch. Will that suit you?’
The blue depths of her eyes gleamed with a glad, responsive
light. She would have liked to say: ‘Yes, come as soon as you
possibly can. I feel alive only when you are with me.’
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SUMMER, 1914
But she said nothing, though a flush rose to her cheeks, as she
got up and followed him.
The drawing-room door stood ajar. He paused in front of it.
T say, may I have a peep? That room brings back so many
memories.’
The shutters were closed; she went in ahead of him and
threw a window open. She had a way of her own of walking,
of crossing a room, moving straight to the point where she had
something to do, unhurrying, with gentle but inflexible
determination.
A mingled scent of beeswax and upholstery rose from the
parquet floor, the rolled-up carpets and curtains stacked in
piles. Jacques took it all in, smiling. A picture rose before him
of the first time he had entered this room with Antoine. Jenny
had taken offence at his remarks, had gone to the window and
leaned on the balcony rail, while he had stood uncomfortably,
damning himself for a clumsy fool, in yonder corner of the room
beside that cabinet. He had no need to raise the sheet that
covered it, to recapitulate the knick-knacks it contained, the
fans, miniatures, bonbonniires and so forth, on which that day, to
keep himself in countenance, he had fixed his eyes, and which
thereafter he had seen, year in, year out, always in the same
places. Successive images of Jenny, changing with the years,
overlaid themselves like tracings on the original picture of
her hovering before his eyes. He saw her pass from childhood
into girlhood, recalled her sudden changes of mood, her quickly
restrained impulses, her shy half-confidences.
He was smiling as he turned towards her. She may have
guessed his thoughts, but she said nothing. She stood before
him now as in old days he used to see her in this same room —
self-possessed, not shy yet never unconstrained, with the direct,
rather hard gaze and calm, inscrutable expression he knew so
well.
‘Jenny, may I see your mother’s room, too?’
She showed no surprise. ‘Come,’ she said.
That room, too, he knew down to its least detail ; how well he
remembered the photographs and portraits hanging on the
walls, that big green damask bedspread glinting through the
390
SUNDAY, JULY 26
filmy point-lace coverlet ! Daniel used to bring him here, after
a discreet knock at his mother’s door. Usually they found
Madame de Fontanin sitting at the fire in one or other of the
two easy chairs that flanked the hearth, reading an English
novel or some edifying work. She would lay the open book on
her knees and welcome the two youngsters with beaming
smiles, as if nothing could have given her greater pleasure
than their visit. She would have Jacques sit in the chair
facing hers, and ask him about his life and studies, with a
friendly, encouraging look on her face. If Daniel took it on
himself to move back an ember slipping off the grate, she
would snatch the tongs from his hand, with playful alacrity,
and laugh: ‘No, my dear, let me attend to it. Fire is such a
temperamental creature !’
It cost Jacques an effort to tear himself away from those long-
cherished memories. At last ‘Let’s go,’ he said, turning towards
the door.
Jenny followed him out into the hall.
Suddenly he looked at her with such a grave expression that
an unreasoning fear came over her, making her drop her eyes.
‘Have you ever been happy here, really and truly happy?’
he asked.
Deliberately, before replying, she reviewed the past, summed
up in a flash of recollection those early years when she had been
tormented by self-questionings, when wise beyond her age, she
had possessed herself in silence. In the greyness of her childhood
there had been some saving gleams of light : her mother’s love,
Daniel’s affection for her. . . . But, no, she had to own it, truly
happy she had never been.
Looking up, she shook her head.
She saw Jacques draw a deep breath, impatiently dash back
his wayward forelock, and, of a sudden, smile. He said nothing ;
he dared not promise her happiness, but still smiling, gazing
deep into her eyes, he clasped her hands as he had done when
he arrived, and pressed his lips to them. She kept her eyes
fixed on him, and she felt her heart throbbing, throbbing. . . .
It was not till much later that she realized how indelibly the
picture of Jacques at the precise moment when he stood thus
391
SUMMER, 1914
in the hall, bending above her hands, had stamped itself on
her memory; with what hallucinating vividness she was, all
her life long, to recall his forehead with the strand of dark hair
drooping across it, the bold insistence of his wilful gaze, and
that proud smile of his, radiant with promise.
19
Monday^ July 2y
JACQUES IS INSTRUCTED TO PROCEED TO BERLIN ON A
SECRET MISSION
Filling the courtyard with their provincial clangour, the
bells of St. Eustache’ Church roused Jacques at an early hour.
His first thought was for Jenny. Throughout the previous
evening, up to the moment when he fell asleep, he had been
running over in memory the incidents of his visit to the Fon-
tanins’ flat ; every time he recalled it some new detail came to
mind. For some minutes he lay still in bed, dimly taking stock
of his new surroundings. The walls were stained with damp,
the ceiling flaked and crumbling, a stranger’s garments dangled
from the coat-pegs. On top of the wardrobe were piles of
propaganda sheets and booklets. Above the metal basin hung
a cheap mirror, splashed and stained. Jacques wondered idly
what sort of life the comrade living here might lead.
The window had stayed open all night; despite the early
hour, the air that came in from the courtyard was foul and
sweltering.
He took his pocket diary from the bedside table. Monday,
the 27th. Let’s see now. Got to meet those fellows from the
C.G.T. this morning at ten ; then I must see about that legacy,
call on the lawyer, broker. But at one I’ll be at her place, with
392
MONDAY, JULY 27
her! At four, the meeting that’s been fixed up for Knipper-
dinck. At six I might drop in at Le Libertaire. And to-night
there’s that mass-meeting. Shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a
rough house. Last night, already, one felt there was trouble in
the air. Still we can’t let those young patriots have it all their
own way in the streets of Paris. To-night’s demonstration
promises well ; we have posters all over the place. The Building
Group has called on the unions to turn out in force. That’s
all to the good ; it’s important for the Trade Union movement
to keep in close touch with the Party.
He ran out into the passage, filled his j'ug at the tap, and
sluiced his shoulders with cold water.
Suddenly, as the thought of Manuel Roy came back to him,
he fell to objurgating the young medico. ‘The truth,’ he
muttered, ‘is that the people you accuse of being unpatriotic
are people in revolt against that damned capitalism you stand
by. If anyone attacks the system, you say he’s a disloyal French-
man. “Za Patrie," that’s your slogan,’ he gurgled, his face
plunged in the basin. ‘But what you really mean is “Class,” the
social hierarchy. All your blather about patriotism’s simply
eyewash; what you’re defending is the present social system.’
Gripping the towel by both ends, he vigorously scrubbed his
back ; his mind was full of visions of the coming world in which
the various countries would survive as local, self-determining
states under the federate control of a proletarian organization.
Then his mind harked back to the Trade Unions.
‘It’s only when one’s got a place inside the unions,’ he
muttered, ‘that one can put in really useful work.’ His face
darkened. Why was he in France? To pickup information —
yes; and he did his best at it. Only yesterday hadn’t he sent
some brief reports to Geneva which would certainly be of help
to Meynestrel? But he had no illusions about the importance
of his mission. ‘If only I could make myself really useful — act 1’
he sighed. He had come to Paris with that hope, and was
raging at being constrained to be a mere onlooker, a picker-up
of unconsidered gossip ; in short, at doing nothing, being unable
to do anything.
Action of any concrete kind was obviously impossible on the
393 o*
SUMMER, 1914
international plane to which he was perforce restricted. It was
ruled out for those who did not form part of any definite group,
who were not members — what was more, members of long
standing — of recognized associations. ‘That’s the trouble,’ he
murmured despondently ‘of being a free-lance as regards
the Revolution. An instinct of escape led me to break with the
bourgeoisie. It was as an individual I rebelled against them, not
as the member of a class. I’ve always been self-centred, trying
to “find myself.” ’ Mithoerg’s taunts came back to him. ‘You,
Kamerad, will never be a true revolutionary.’ And, thinking of
the Austrian, of Meynestrel, and all those others whose stern
sense of reality had led them to accept once for all the fact
that revolution cannot dispense with bloodshed, he felt again
the tightening at the throat which always gripped him when he
came up against that ugly issue, the problem of violence. ‘Oh
if only one day I could free my mind of doubts, make an entire
surrender of myself, heart and soul !’
He finished dressing in one of those moods of vague dejection
which were only too familiar to him, but happily did not last,
quickly succumbing to the stress and bustle of active life.
He gave himself a little shake. ‘Let’s go and find out what’s
been happening.’
The thought of it was enough to brace him. After locking
his door, he ran down to the street.
The papers had little new to tell him. The right-wing organs
made much of the demonstrations of the Patriotic League
around the Strasburg Monument. In most of the papers the
scant official communiques were eked out with verbose, often
contradictory comments. They conveyed an impression that
orders had been given to alternate as deftly as might be the
grounds for hope and reasons for alarm. The left-wing press
called on all pacifists to attend a monster demonstration to be
held that evening at the Place de la Republique The Bataille
Syndicaliste flaunted a front-page appeal : ^Everyone to the
Boulevards to-night B
Jacques called in at the Humanite office before going to the
Rue de Bondy, where he was not due till ten.
At the door of Gallot’s office he was buttonholed by an
394
MONDAY, JULY 27
elderly woman, whom he remembered having met on several
occasions at gatherings in the ProgrSs rooms. A militant socialist
of fifteen years’ standing, she was editor of the j'ournal, La
Femme Libre, and was generally known as ‘Old Ma Ury.’
Everybody liked her, but was careful to keep out of her clutches,
for her loquacity knew no bounds. Obliging to a degree, an
eager champion of all worthy causes and unsparing of herself,
she had a mania for recommending people to each other, and
despite age and varicose veins, was indefatigable when it was
a question of getting a worker into a job or a comrade out of a
tight corner. When Perinet had fallen foul of the police, she
had courageously given him shelter. She was a quaint-looking
creature; her wild, grey, wispy hair gave her the air of one of
the harpies of the Commune. Yet her face had kept a beauty
of its own. ‘She’s like a classy doll that’s been left out in the
rain’ — thus Perinet in his broad Paris accent. She was a fervent
vegetarian, and her latest enterprise was a co-operative society
which was to provide each district of Paris with its socialist-
vegetarian restaurant. The crisis notwithstanding, she would
not miss a chance of making a convert to the vegetarian creed
and, clutching Jacques’ arm, launched out into a homily.
‘Ask the folk who know about it, my dear boy. Consult any
health-specialist. Your body can’t achieve the harmony of its
functions and your brain can’t give its maximum output, if
you insist on stuffing yourself with decaying animal matter, if
you live on corpses like a vulture !’
Jacques had great difficulty in shaking her off and getting
into Gallot’s office alone.
Gallot was busy examining a list of names that Pages, his
secretary, was showing him, and ticking them off with a red
pencil. He glanced up over the rampart of documents stacked
on the table and signed to Jacques to take a seat, while he
finished checking up the list.
As Jacques saw him now, in profile, his head seemed a ro-
dent’s rather than a man’s ; almost all of his face consisted of a
tapering snout extending from the slanting forehead to his
nose-tip. Its beginning was hidden in a mass of pepper-and-
salt hair crowning his brows, and it ended in a bushy beard
395
SUMMER, 1914
like a penwiper clamped to an abortive chin and fuzzing up
round the small, sunken mouth. Jacques never set eyes on Gallot
without a sense of startled curiosity, like that one feels when
catching a hedgehog unawares upon some country road, before
it has had time to curl into a ball.
The door was flung violently open and Stefany burst in,
coatless, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows on his sinewy arihs,
his bird-like nose bespectacled. He brought a copy of the
resolution passed the day before at the Trade Union Congress
in Brussels.
Gallot stood up to greet him, but only after he had taken the
list of names from Pages and slipppd it carefully into a file. The
three men talked of the Belgian resolution for a while, paying
no heed to Jacques. Then they began discussing the latest news.
That morning undoubtedly the tension had relaxed, the
news from Central Europe furnished some grounds for hope.
No Austrian troops had so far crossed the Danube. This sudden
lull, coming as it did after Austria’s seeming haste to force a
break with Servia, was, to Jaures’ mind, significant. Obviously,
in view of the conciliatory tone maintained by Servia and the
undisguised indignation of the European Powers, Austria was
still in two minds about crossing her Rubicon. Moreover, all
things considered, it seemed reasonable to put a less unfavour-
able interpretation on the threats of mobilization bandied by
Germany and Russia, which had caused such a flutter in the
diplomatic dove-cotes. Some indeed saw in these measures an
ostensibly aggressive line of action pursued with the best inten-
tions — to safeguard peace. And there was no denying that its
immediate effects promised well; Russia had obtained from
the Servians an undertaking to fall back without fighting in
the event of an Austrian advance. Thus time would be gained
for exploring possibilities of conciliation.
The reports Jaures had received as to the anti-war activities
of the internationalists were, on the whole, encouraging. In
Italy the socialist members of parliament were to meet at
Milan, review the situation and affirm the pacifist standpoint
of the Italian Party. In Germany the measures taken by the
Government to muzzle the opposition, stringent though they
396
MONDAY, JULY 27
were, had failed. A monster demonstration against war was due
to take place at Berlin on the following day. In France the
local socialist and Trade Union organizations all over the
country were on the alert and formulating plans for a strike.
A message was brought to Stefany, that Jules Guesde was
waiting to see him. Anxious to be on time for his next appoint-
ment, Jacques left the room with him and accompanied him
to his private office.
'‘Local organizations, you said.’ Jacques’ tone was dubious.
Tn the event of war, would they be prepared to embark on a
general strike, I wonder?’
‘Obviously it would be a general strike,’ Stefany replied.
But, to Jacques’ thinking, his tone somewhat lacked confidence.
The Cafe du Rialto was in the Rue de Bondy, and its
proximity to the Trade Union Headquarters, the Conf Miration
Generale du Travail — familiarly known as the ‘G.G.T.’ — had
caused this cafe to be chosen as the meeting-place of a group
of particularly active Trade Unionists. Here Jacques was due
to meet two C.G.T. militants with whom Richardley had
asked him to get in touch. One of them had been a school-
master, the other foreman in an ironworks.
Jacques was greatly interested by their description of the
plans in course of being drawn up to bring about a closer
collaboration between the activities of the C.G.T. and those of
the socialist organizations in their joint anti-war campaigns.
The conversation had lasted nearly an hour— Jacques had no
desire to cut it short — when the woman in charge of the estab-
lishment appeared at the door of the back room used for
meetings and to the company at large announced :
‘Thibault’s wanted at the telephone.’
Jacques did not move at once. No one could have had a
notion he was to be found here, and he supposed there was some
other person of his name amongst those present. But, as no one
else made a move, he went out, to make sure.
At the other end of the wire was Pages. It flashed on Jacques
that, when leaving Gallot’s office, he had mentioned his
appointment at the ‘Rialto.’
‘Lucky I got on to you,’ Pages said. ‘There’s a Swiss chap
397
SUMMER, 1914
here wants to see you. Has been looking for you since yesterday,
so he says.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A funny little cove with white hair. Looks like an albino.’
‘I know who it is. He’s not Swiss, he’s a Belgian. I wonder
what he’s here for.’
‘I didn’t want to give away where you were. But I told him
to look in at the Croissant, at one, on the off chance.’
Jacques remembered his plan to visit Jenny.
‘Nothing doing. I’ve an appointment at one, that I can’t
possibly . . .’
‘Please yourself,’ Pages cut in. ‘But it seems urgent. He has
a message from Meynestrel to transmit to you. . . Well, anyhow
I’ve let you know. Bye-bye !’
‘Thanks.’
An urgent message from Meynestrel! As he left the Rialto,
Jacques was still undecided. He could not bring himself to put
back his visit to Jenny. Finally good sense won the day. Before
calling on his lawyer he flung ragefully into a post-office and
sent an express letter to Jenny, warning her not to expect him
before three.
Beynaud’s offices occupied the whole first floor of a handsome
building in the Rue Tronchet. In other circumstances, the
heavy pomposity of the lawyer, the solemnity of the premises,
furniture and staff, and the archaic gloom of this necropolis of
legal documents would have struck Jacques as frankly ludicrous.
He was greeted with a certain deference, as son and heir of the
late lamented Monsieur Thibault and a potential client in the
future. From office-boy to head of the establishment, vener-
ation for the man of property was obviously de rigueur. Jacques
was requested to sign certain documents and, as he seemed in a
particular hurry to take possession of the fortune standing in his
name, discreet enquiries were ventured as to his intentions.
‘Obviously,’ Maitre Beynaud oracled, gripping the lions’
heads which ended the arms of his throne-like chair, ‘the
Bourse, in critical times like these, offers unusual opportunities
— for those who have inside knowledge of the stock-market.
But we must not forget the risks involved . . . ’
398
MONDAY, JULY 27
Cutting short the oracle, Jacques took his leave.
At the broker’s office the clerks were in a state of feverish
commotion behind their monkey-cagelike railings. Telephones
were frantically buzzing, orders crepitating from desk to desk.
The Stock Exchange was due to open shortly and, in view of
the political situation, there were fears of something like a
panic. Difficulties were raised when Jacques asked to see the
head of the firm, M. de Jonquoy, in person, and he had to make
shift with the great man’s second-in-command. No sooner
had he expressed a desire to sell out his holdings lock, stock and
barrel, than he was informed that the moment was ill-chosen
and he would sustain a heavy loss on the transaction.
‘Never mind,’ was all he said.
So determined did he seem that the stock-bioker was im-
pressed. To take so rash a step with such serene assurance un-
doubtedly implied that this queer young man had picked up
some inside information and had in view a masterstroke of
speculation. Two days, however, would be needed to put
through the selling orders. Jacques rose, expressing his inten-
tion to return on Wednesday and take delivery of the proceeds
of the sales, in cash.
The stock-broker escorted him politely to the outer door.
Jacques found Vanheede sitting by himself near the entrance
of the cafe. His elbows on the table, his chin cupped in his
hands, he was blinking towards the door, watching all who
entered. He cut a quaint figure in a khaki tropical suit, bleached
almost to the paleness of his hair. Though at the Croissant they
were used to queer birds of every plumage, he attracted some
amused attention.
On seeing Jacques he stood up at once, and the blood rose
to his pale cheeks. For a moment he could not get a word out.
Then ‘At last !’ he breathed.
‘So you’re at Paris too, Vanheede old chap !’
‘At last!’ the white-haired youth repeated shakily. ‘I was
really getting terribly alarmed, Baulthy, don’t you know?’
‘Why? What’s up?’
399
SUMMER, 1914
Screening his eyes with his hand, Vanheede cast a wary
glance towards the neighbouring tables.
Greatly mystified, Jacques took the seat beside Vanheede’s,
bending his ear towards him.
‘You’re wanted,’ the albino whispered.
A picture of Jenny rose before Jacques’ eyes; impatiently he
thrust back his wayward lock of hair and asked uncomfortably :
‘I’m wanted? At Geneva?’
Shaking his tousled head, Vanheede fumbled in his pocket.
From his wallet he extracted a sealed, unaddressed envelope.
While Jacques was feverishly opening it, Vanheede murmured
in his ear:
‘I’ve something else for you. Identity papers in the name
ofEberle.’
The envelope contained a double sheet of notepaper ; on the
front sheet were some lines in Richardley’s hand. The second
sheet seemed blank.
Jacques read :
The Pilot is counting on you. Letter follows. We all meet
at Brussels on Wednesday.
Yours, R.
Jacques knew what ‘Letter follows’ signified : that the blank
page had a message written in invisible ink.
He twiddled the letter between his fingers. ‘I’ll have to go
home to find out what is written there. . . . And suppose you
hadn’t found me?’ he asked Vanheede.
A seraphic smile lit up the young face.
‘Mithoerg has come, too. In that case, he was to open the
envelope and do the job himself. We’re to meet the others at
Brussels ... So you’ve moved from Liebaert’s place?’
‘Where is Mithoerg now?’
‘He’s hunting for you, too. We’re putting up with a man
called Oerding, one of Mithoerg’s fellow-countrymen, and I’m
to meet him there at three.’
‘Look here !’ Jacques thrust the letter into his pocket. ‘I won’t
take you with me to my room; there’s no point in letting the
concierge set eyes on you. But will you and Mithoerg meet
400
MONDAY, JULY 27
me at quarter-past four, at the tramway shelter outside Mont-
parnasse Station — ^you know where it is? I’ll take you on to an
interesting meeting in the Rue des Volontaires. And to-night,
after dinner, we’ll go to the demonstration in the Place de
la Republique.’
Half an hour later, in his room, Jacques read the secret
message.
Be at Berlin on Tuesday, the 28th.
At 6 p.m. visit Aschinger's Cafe in Potsdamer Platz. Tr,
will be there and give you detailed instructions.
After taking what he gives you, catch first train to
Brussels.
Spare no precaution. Have no other papers on you
except those given by V.
If, by mischance, caught and accused of espionage, em-
ploy as lawyer Max Kerfen of Berlin.
It’s a plan devised by Tr. and group. Tr. particularly in-
sisted on your co-operation.
‘So that’s that!’ Jacques said half-aloud, and thought
immediately : ‘Well, here’s my chance of doing something. I’m
on active service — at last 1’
The developer had left a smell of chemicals in the basin.
After drying his hands, Jacques sat down on the bed.
‘Now let’s think things out quite calmly. Got to be in Berlin
to-morrow afternoon. The morning train wouldn’t get me there
in time to be at Aschinger’s at six. I must take the ten o’clock
train to-night. Anyhow I’ll have time to see Jenny again.
Thank goodness ! But I shall miss the demonstration.’ His
breath was coming rather rapidly. There was a time-table in
his valise, which was lying open on the floor. Picking it up, he
went to the window; sudaenly he found the room insufferably
hot. ‘After all, the 12-15 train would do. It’s a slowish train,
but if I take it. I’ll be able to attend the demonstration.’
In a room near by a woman was singing as she worked; now
and again the shrill, full-throated melody was interrupted by
a metallic clink, the sound of flatirons put back on a stove.
‘ “Tr” means Trauttenbach, of course. What’s this great
“plan” of his, I wonder. And why did he insist on it being me?’
401
SUMMER, 1914
He mopped his sweating brows. He was at once thrilled by
the prospect of doing something definite, by the mysterious
nature of his mission and the risks it might involve — and heart-
broken at the thought of having to leave Jenny.
‘As I’m to meet them in Brussels on Wednesday,’ he reflected,
‘there’s nothing to prevent my being back in Paris on Thursday,
if all goes well.’
In that case he would be away three days only; a consoling
thought.
‘I must let Jenny know at once. There’s just time, if I’m to
be outside the Gare Montparnasse at four-fifteen.’
As he could not count on being able to return to his room
before leaving Paris, he emptied out his wallet, made a packet
of his private papers and addressed it, on the off chance, to
Meynestrel. He kept with him only the Eberle passport given
him by Vanheede.
Then he started off post-haste to Jenny’s flat.
20
Monday, July 27
JACQ^UES’ SECOND VISIT TO JENNY
Jenny opened the door so promptly when he rang the bell
that one might have thought she had been standing there ever
since he had left her, waiting for his return.
‘Bad news,’ he said at once in a low voice. ‘I’ve got to go
abroad and I must leave Paris this evening.’
‘To go abroad?’ she faltered.
Her faee had gone pale, her eyes were fixed on him intently.
He looked so upset at having to inflict this disagreeable news
on her that she would have given much to be able to hide her
402
MONDAY, JULY 27
distress. But the thought of losing Jacques again played havoc
with her self-control.
‘I’ll be back on Thursday, or Friday at the latest,’ he hastened
to explain.
Her head was bowed. She drew a deep breath. Slowly the
colour came back to her cheeks.
‘Only three days,’ he said with an attempt at a smile. ‘Three
days isn’t such a long time, when one has a whole life of
happiness ahead !’
She gave him a shy, questioning glance.
‘Please don’t ask me about it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been told off
for a special mission. I must go.’
At the word ‘mission’ an expression of such deep anxiety
had settled on Jenny’s face that Jacques, though himself
unaware on what errand he was being sent to Germany, felt
he must say something to reassure her.
‘It’s only a matter of getting in touch with some foreign
politicians, and I’ve been given the job because I speak their
language fluently.’
Her eyes were still intent on him. He broke off abruptly,
pointing to some newspapers lying on the hall table.
‘I suppose you’ve seen the news?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ was all she said, but the tone made it clear that she
was now as conscious as he was himself of the gravity of the
political situation.
He came closer, clasped both her hands in his and kissed
them.
‘Let’s go in there, to “our” room,’ he suggested, pointing
towards Daniel’s bedroom. ‘I’ve only a few minutes to spare.
Don’t let’s spoil them.’
Brightening up a little, she led the way along the passage.
‘Any news from your mother?’
‘Not yet,’ she said without turning. ‘She was to have reached
Vienna early this afternoon. I don’t expect a wire before
to-morrow.’
The room had obviously been made ready for his visit. The
partly lowered blind mellowed the light, the whole place had
been tidied up, newly ironed window-curtains had b^en hung,
403
SUMMER, 1914
the clock set going, and a bowl of sweet-peas stood on one
corner of the desk.
Jenny had come to a stop in the middle of the room and was
watching his face with a tense, rather anxious gaze. He smiled,
but could not get her to smile in return.
‘So you really mean it?’ she said slowly, in an unsteady voice.
‘You can only stay a few minutes?’
His eyes lingered on her smilingly, affectionately, but there
was something vaguely remote in his gaze, for all its stead-
fastness, that made Jenny slightly uneasy. It struck her that
not once, since he came in, had Jacques met her eyes quite
squarely.
He saw her lips quiver. Clasping her hands again, he
whispered :
‘Please don’t make it too hard.’
She drew herself up and smiled on him.
‘That’s better.’ He drew her towards a chair. Then, without
explaining the sequence of his thoughts, he added in an under-
tone:
‘One’s got to believe in oneself, in fact one should have faith
in nothing else. A man’s inner life can have no solid foundation
unless he’s fully alive to his destiny and sacrifices everything
to it.’
‘Yes,’ she murmured in an unsteady voice.
‘To realize one’s inner forces,’ he went on, as if talking to
himself. ‘And let them take charge. And if others choose to
look on them as evil forces, well, it can’t be helped.’
‘Yes,’ she repeated, looking down again.
Time and again, during the last few days, she had thought,
as she was thinking then: ‘Now that’s something I must store
up in my mind and think over, so as to understand him better.’
She stayed a minute perfectly motionless, her eyes veiled by
their lashes; there was a look of such rapt meditation in the
bent face that for a while Jacques could not bring himself to
speak again.
At last in a vibrant but controlled voice he said :
‘One of the turning points in my life was when I realized
that what others disapproved of in me and thought pernicious,
404
MONDAY, JULY 27
was, on the contrary, the best and most genuine part of my
nature.’
She listened to him, grasped his meaning, but a sort of
dizziness came over her. For the last two days the foundations
of her inner world had been crumbling one after the other. A
void was forming about her which the new values on which
all Jacques’ pronouncements seemed based were as yet unable
to replenish.
But then she saw his face light up. He was smiling again,
but his smile was quite different. He had just thought of
something, and gave her a questioning look.
‘I’ve an idea, Jenny. As you’re all by yourself this evening
why shouldn’t we go and have dinner together, you and I?
Anywhere you like?’
She stared at him without answering a word, taken aback
by so simple, yet in her case so unusual a suggestion.
‘I shan’t be free before half-past seven,’ he went on. ‘And
I have an appointment in the Place de la Republique, at nine.
Shall we put in that hour or so together?’
‘Yes.’
What a way she has, Jacques thought, a so resolute yet gentle
way of saying ‘yes,’ or ‘no !’
‘Splendid !’ he exclaimed joyfully. ‘I shan’t have time to
call round for you, but could you manage to be in front of the
Bourse at half-past seven?’
She nodded.
He stood up.
‘Well, now I must be off. See you this evening, then.’
She made no attempt to detain him, but followed him
silently to the head of the stairs.
As he turned back, on his way down, for a last affectionate
smile, she leant over the banisters and, suddenly emboldened,
called to him in a low tone :
‘I like to picture you moving about amongst your friends.
At Geneva, for instance. It’s there, I should say, you’re really
and truly yourself’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, you see,’ she replied slowly, groping for her words,
405
SUMMER, 1914
‘wherever /’ve seen you, until now, you’ve always seemed to
be rather — how shall I put it? — rather out of your element.’
He had stopped half-way down the flight, and stood looking
up at her earnestly.
‘Don’t you believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Over there, too, I’m
out of my element. In fact I’m out of my element everywhere.
I’ve always been like that. I was born out of my element!’
He smiled. ‘It’s only when I’m with you, Jenny, that this
feeling of being out of my element wears off a bit.’
His smile faded. He seemed half inclined to add something
more. He made a hasty gesture which might have meant any-
thing and went on down the stairs.
‘She’s perfection itself,’ he was thinking. ‘Perfection itself —
yet how terribly mysterious !’ But that was nothing against her,
to his mind. Was not the appeal Jenny had had for him from
the first partly due to that sphinx-like quality of hers?
Back in her room, Jenny stood for a few minutes behind the
closed door, listening to his receding footsteps.
How baffling he is! she thought suddenly. Not that she
would have had him any different. Her love for him was deep
enough to vanquish even that eerie sense of dread he always
left in his wake.
21
Monday, July 2y
THE POLITICAL TENSION INCREASES
The ‘Vaugirard’ meeting was held in the private room of the
Cafe Garibaldi, in the Rue de Volontaires.
Being introduced by Jacques, Vanheede and Mithoerg were
received as delegates of the Swiss branch of the Party and were
given seats in the front rows.
406
MONDAY, JULY 27
Giboin, the chairman, called upon Knipperdinck to address
the meeting. The old Swedish thinker’s works were written in
his native tongue, but his influence had long since taken effect
beyond the confines of the Scandinavian countries. His more
outstanding books had been translated, and many of those
present had read them. He spoke French well. His tall stature,
his crown of snow-white hair, the light of apostolic fervour
shining in his eyes enhanced the prestige of his theories. He
hailed from a peace-loving and essentially neutral land, in
which the rabid nationalism of the leading continental coun-
tries had for many years been viewed with anxiety and dis-
approval. His appraisal of the European situation was severely
lucid. His well-informed, impassioned speech was constantly
interrupted by bursts of applause.
Jacques listened with half an ear. His mind was full of Jenny
— and of Berlin. As soon as Knipperdinck had wound up with
an emotional appeal to make a stand against militarism, he
rose from his seat without waiting for the general debate to
begin and, giving up the idea of taking Vanheede and Mithoerg
round to the Libertaire, made an appointment to meet them
after dinner, at the mass-meeting.
In the square beside the Comedie Frangaise, seeing what the
time was, he changed his plans. Montmartre was a long way
off. It would be better to give up the call at the Libertaire, to
go back to the Humamte, and get some idea of what had been
happening during the afternoon.
As he turned into the Rue du Croissant, he ran up against
old Mourlan, in his black printer’s overalls, just leaving the
premises of the newspaper in company with Milanoff. He
walked a little way with them.
Jacques knew that Milanoff kept in touch with anarchist
circles. He asked him if he meant to attend the Congress to
be held in London during the week-end.
‘Nothing that’s of any use can come of that,’ was all the
Russian chose to answer.
‘And besides,’ Mourlan put in, ‘the Congress seems to be
in a bad way. No one cares to be in the limelight just now.
They’re all running to earth. At Police Headquarters and in
407
SUMMER, 1914
the Home Office, they’re already spreading their nets ; they’re
making haste to bring the “B” List up to date.’
‘What’s that — the “B” List?’ MilanofF enquired.
‘A list of all the suspects in the country. They have to see
the police force set for action if the crash comes.’
‘And up there, what are they saying this evening?’ Jacques
enquired, pointing to the Humanite windows.
Mourlan’s shoulders lifted. The latest information to come
over the wires was anything but hopeful.
From St. Petersburg, thanks to the indiscretion of an always
well-informed special correspondent of the Times, the news had
leaked out that the Czar had authorized the mobilization of
the fourteen Army Corps stationed on the Austrian border,
thus taking up Germany’s challenge. Not only had Russia
failed to be intimidated, as it had been hoped at first she
would be, but she was becoming blatantly aggressive. The
Russian Government threatened at once to decree a general
mobilization of all her forces, should Germany so much as
venture upon partial mobilization. It was known through
dispatches received from Berlin that the Kaiser’s Government,
throwing caution to the winds, were speeding up their mobiliza-
tion. The Chief of General Staff, von Moltke, had been
urgently summoned to headquarters. The German public had
been informed by the official Press that war was expected to
break out any minute. The Berliner Lokalanzeiger published
a lengthy plea in favour of the Austrian Ultimatum, and
declared that Servia must be completely crushed. From early
morning, in Berlin, the banks had been besieged by panicky
mobs, clamouring to withdraw their deposits.
In France, the credit establishments were similarly mobbed.
At Lyons, at Bordeaux and at Lille, runs on the banks were
making matters difficult for the directors. On the Paris Bourse
there had been a regular riot that very afternoon. An Austrian
outside broker, charged with having engineered a fall in the
Rentes, had been manhandled by an angry crowd shouting;
‘Kill the spy!’ The police had managed to rescue him in the
nick of time. A Police Inspector had ordered the peristyle
to be cleared and it had been as much as the constables could
408
MONDAY, JULY 27
do to prevent the Austrian from being torn to pieces by a
raging mob. The incident was an absurd one in itself, but it
went to show to what a pitch of war-fever the public was
worked up.
‘And what about the Balkans?’ Jacques asked. ‘The Austrians
haven’t actually moved across the border, have they?’
‘Not yet, it appears.’
According to the latest telegrams, however, the offensive
which had been postponed so far was expected to be launched
that night. Gallot, in fact, declared on reliable authority that
Austria had decided upon general mobilization, that the
decree would be published next morning and carried out
within three days.
‘In France,’ Mourlan remarked, ‘all officers on leave, men
on furlough, railway and post-office employees away on their
holidays have j'ust been called back by wire. Poincare himself
is setting the example. He’s hurrying straight back, without
breaking his journey anywhere. He’s due at Dunkirk on
Wednesday.’
‘Your mention of Poincare,’ Milanoff broke in, ‘reminds
me. . . .’ And he went on to relate a significant anecdote which
was going the rounds in Vienna. On July 21st — the story went
— at the reception of the Corps Diplomatique in the Winter
Palace, the President of the French Republic, in that peremp-
tory voice of his, had addressed the Austrian Ambassador in
the following sensational terms : ‘Servia has very warm friends
in the Russian people, Mr. Ambassador. And Russia has an
Ally — France !’
‘Always the same sabre-rattling policy!’ Jacques muttered,
his thoughts reverting to Studler.
Milanoff suggested an adjournment to the Progres offices,
pending the hour set for the meeting. But Mourlan turned
down the suggestion.
‘We’ve had quite enough palaver for one evening,’ he
observed gruffly.
‘There’s something I want you to do for me,’ Jacques said to
him when Milanoff had gone. ‘I’ve left a parcel tied up with
string in my room in the Rue du Four; it contains some private
409
SUMMER, 1914
papers. If anything . . . went wrong with me during the next
few days, would you have them sent to Meynestrel, in
Geneva?’
He smiled, but gave no further explanations. Mourlan looked
him in the eyes for a second or two. But he asked no question,
merely nodding assent. As they parted he held Jacques’ hand
for a moment in his own.
‘Well, good luck!’ he said, for once omitting to call him
‘lad.’
Jacques went back to the newspaper office. He had only
half an hour left before the time of his appointment with
Jenny.
A party of socialists, among whom he caught sight of Cadieux,
Compere-Morel, Vaillant and Semblat, was coming out of
Jaures’ room. He saw them go into Gallot’s office. Turning
back, he went and knocked at Stefany’s door. Stefany was by
himself, bending over a table strewn with foreign newspapers.
He was a tall, thin man, hollow-chested and high
shouldered. His long face, framed in coal-black hair, was
perpetually twitching — sometimes so violently that he was
taken for a lunatic at large. He was a man of all-consuming,
typically Southern activity. (He hailed from Avignon.) After
obtaining a history degree he had taught that subject for some
years in a provincial public school, before diverting his energies
to the socialist cause, and had left a lasting impression on the
memories of his pupils. Jules Guesde had him given a post on
the Humanite staff. Jaures, whose robust health inclined him
to shun sickly people, had no liking for the historian, though
he held him in high esteem. He had, however, let him work
his way up to a leading position on the staff, and turned over
the harder jobs to him.
He had deputed him this afternoon to keep in touch with
the Parliamentary Socialist Group and the Party Committee.
Jaures was trying to get the socialist deputies to enter an
official protest against any armed intervention on the part of
Russia. He had been calling again and again at the Quai d’Or-
say, in the hope of inducing Paris not to side with St. Petersburg,
and to preserve complete liberty of action, so as to be able
410
MONDAY, JULY 27
to play the part of arbitrator and peace-maker when oppor-
tunity arose.
Stefany had j'ust had a long talk with the Skipper. He did
not conceal from Jacques that he had found him in an un-
usually ‘jumpy’ state. Jaures had decreed that the next day’s
number of the Humanite should bear the ominous headline
in block letters: WAR WILL BREAK OUT THIS
MORNING.
Between them, he and Stefany had drafted a manifesto in
which the Socialist Party proclaimed their will to peace
urbi et orbi, as spokesmen of the French working class. Of this
declaration Stefany had committed to memory whole passages,
which he recited in his sing-song voice, while pacing up and
down the narrow office. His small, bird-like eyes flickered
excitedly behind his glasses, and his lean hooked nose stabbed
the air like an eagle’s beak.
‘Against a policy of violence,’ he declaimed, raising a
monitory arm, ‘the socialists appeal to the whole country.’
The need he felt, on this particular evening, of bracing up his
faith by dwelling on these comforting assurances was at once
obvious and pathetic.
A similar declaration had been received in the course of the
day from the German socialists. Jaures had himself translated
it, with Stefany’s assistance. ‘War is threatening us,’ it ran.
‘We will not have war, at any price. Long live international
reconciliation! In the name of Humanity and Civilization
the class-conscious proletariat of Germany enters an im-
passioned protest. With no uncertain voice it calls on the
German Government to use their influence over Austria for
the maintenance of Peace. And if this abominable war cannot
be averted, it demands that Germany shall be kept entirely
out of the conflict.’
Jaures wanted the two manifestos to be reproduced by
thousands and displayed side by side, in two-column posters,
all over Paris and in all the large towns. The various socialist
printing-works had been commandeered that same night for
the purpose.
‘In Italy they’re putting in some good work, too,’ Stefany
41 1
SUMMER, 1914
observed. ‘The socialist group of Deputies have held a meeting
in Milan, at which they passed a resolution demanding that
an emergency session of the Italian Chamber be convened
immediately, so as to force the Government to declare publicly
that Italy has no intention of following the lead of her partners
in the Triple Alliance.’
With a quick movement, he snatched a sheet of paper from
the table.
‘Here’s a translation of the socialist manifesto that has just
been published in Mussolini’s Avanti'. “There’s only one line
for Italy to take — neutrality. Is the Italian proletariat going to
allow itself to be led a second time to the slaughter? For us,
for all of us, the slogan is to-day : Down with war ! Not a man
not a centesimo will we contribute !” ’
This translation was to be published, next day, on the front
page of the Humanite.
‘On Wednesday,’ he continued, ‘at Brussels, will be held not
only a gathering of the International Socialist Committee, but
also in the evening, a mass protest meeting, with speeches by
Jaures, by Vandervelde for Belgium, Haase and Molkenbuhr
for Germany, Keir Hardie for England and Rubanovitch for
Russia. It will be a spectacular affair. In every country all
available militants will be called upon to make the trip, and
join in a demonstration that will stagger Europe. It must be
made clear that the proletariat of every country in the world
is up in arms against the nationalistic governments.’
He strode up and down the room, puckering his nose, screw-
ing up his lips, seething with impotent rage, and steadfastly
refusing to abandon hope.
The door opened to admit Marc Levoir. He was red in the
face and excited. No sooner had he come in than he dropped
into a seat.
‘It’s enough to make a man wonder if they don’t actually
want it, every one of them !’
‘What? War?’
He had just got back from the Quai d’Orsay and was the
bearer of strange news. Von Schoen, it was stated, had come
round to give notice that, so as to provide Russia with a
412
MONDAY, JULY 27
decent excuse for dropping her uncompromising attitude,
Germany undertook to obtain from Austria a formal promise
that the territorial integrity of Servia would be respected.
Furthermore, the Ambassador was reported to have suggested
to the French Government that they should publish an official
statement in the Press, declaring that France and Germany,
‘completely at one in their fervent desire that peace should be
maintained,’ were acting in concert and doing their utmost
to persuade Russia to act with moderation. And it was alleged
that the French Government, under the influence of Berthelot,
had rejected this proposition and declined point blank to make
any show whatever of being ‘at one’ with Germany, for fear
of giving offence to their Russian ally.
‘Whenever Germany makes any suggestion whatsoever,’
Levoir concluded, ‘the Quai d’Orsay like one man pronounces
it “a trap.” And so it has always been for the last forty years.’
Stefany’s beady eyes were fixed on Levoir with an expression
of distress. His sallow face seemed to have grown still longer,
as though his flabby cheeks were being dragged down by the
heavy under-jaw.
‘What’s so appalling,’ he muttered, ‘is to think there are six
or seven men in Europe — ten perhaps — making history all
on their own. It puts me in mind of that line in King Lear:
“ ’Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind! . . .”
Come along,’ — he broke off suddenly, placing his hand on
Levoir’s shoulder — ‘we must go and tell the Skipper about it.’
When the others had left, Jacques rose from his seat. The
time had come for him to keep his appointment with Jenny.
And to-morrow night, he thought. I’ll be in Berlin. He only
remembered his mission at odd moments, but each time it
was with a pleasurable thrill, not unmixed with a certain
anxiety, anxiety lest he should fall short of what was expected
of him.
413
SUMMER, 1914
22
Monday, July 27
JACQUES AND JENNY DINE TOGETHER AT A LITTLE RESTAURANT
T H o u G H it was barely the half hour by the Stock Exchange
clock, Jenny was there already. Jacques saw her when he was
some way off, and halted. The iron gates had been closed for
the night and against the dim background Jenny’s graceful
form stood out in statue-like repose amid the usual evening
crowd of newspaper-vendors and busmen gathering at the
‘Bourse’ terminus. For some moments he remained on the kerb
gazing at her, stirred by an emotion he had often felt in the
past on taking her thus unawares. In the far-off days of Maisons-
Laffitte, he would often linger outside the Fontanins’ garden
on the chance of a glimpse of her. He remembered one late
afternoon when he had seen her in a white dress, emerging
from the shadow of the fir-trees and crossing a patch of sun-
light that for a magic instant haloed her in dazzling sheen.
That night she was not wearing her mourning veil. The
black costume made her seem even slimmer. She never yielded
to the impulse to make herself attractive either in her dress
or her demeanour, for she sought her own approval only; she
was at once too proud to care much what others thought,
and too modest to suppose others would trouble to pass judge-
ment on her. The dresses she preferred were of a quiet cut,
severely practical. None the less Jenny always looked well
dressed, with an austere almost puritanical elegance due to
simplicity and her natural good taste.
When she saw him coming she gave a slight start and went
towards him, smiling. For now she had learnt to smile effort-
lessly — or, rather, a faint flutter dimpled the corners of her
lips, while the clear depths of her eyes lit up with a little sudden
sparkle that, each time Jacques glimpsed it, filled him with
delight.
414
MONDAY, JULY 27
‘When you smile,’ he began teasingly, ‘you always look as if
you were doing one a charity.’
‘Really?’
She could not help feeling a little hurt by the remark, but at
once she told herself that he was right, and almost went so far
as to confess: ‘Yes, I know there’s something dreadfully stiff
and crabbed in my expression. . . . ’ But she always disliked
talking about herself.
Suddenly Jacques gave a sigh. ‘Things are getting worse and
worse. Every government’s “taking a firm stand,” bluster-
ing. It’s a sort of competition to see who can be most
intractable.’
She had noticed how tired and careworn Jacques was looking,
from the moment they had met. Now she threw him a question-
ing glance, as if anxious to learn the details.
He shook his head mulishly. ‘No, no. Don’t let’s talk about
it. What would be the good anyhow? I’d much rather you
helped me to forget about it all, now that I’ve a short spell off.
How about dining somewhere near by? That will save time,
and I’m fiendishly hungry — didn’t have any lunch. Come
along !’
He led the way and she followed, thinking, ‘Supposing
mother or Daniel saw us now!’ This escapade had sud-
denly given their intimacy — of which neither was as yet
fully conscious — a sort of public recognition, and she had a
vaguely guilty feeling, like a child who is doing wrong.
‘How about that place?’ He pointed to a humble little
restaurant at the corner of a street; through the windows
standing open on the street could be seen some tables spread
with white tablecloths. ‘It looks quiet, don’t you think so?’
Crossing the road, they entered the little dining-room side
by side; it was cool and empty. In the background, through
the glazed door of the kitchen, they had the back view of two
women seated at table under a hanging lamp. Neither of
them looked round.
Jacques had dropped his hat with a weary gesture on to the
wall-sofa, and walked towards the kitchen door, hoping to
attract the attention of the women. For a moment he stood
415
SUMMER, 1914
unmoving. Jenny glanced towards him and suddenly she
fancied she was looking at a stranger’s face, a much older
man’s; in the light issuing from the kitchen all the outlines of
the face seemed evilly distorted. She had the impression of
living in a nightmare, the panic fear of a young girl who has
been lured by criminals to some sinister retreat. The sensation
passed immediately; no sooner had Jacques turned towards
her and the shadows veered, than he looked himself again.
‘Do sit down,’ he said, moving the table aside for her to take
a seat against the wall. ‘No, this is the best place, you won’t
have the daylight in your eyes.’
It was a new experience for Jenny to find herself the object
of a man’s concern; she welcomed it now with a little thrill
of pleasure.
The younger of the women in the kitchen, a fat, slatternly
creature in a pink blouse, with a forehead like a heifer’s and
a mop of dark hair set low on it, had risen at last. She
approached them with the surly air of an animal disturbed at
feeding-time.
‘Well, can we have some dinner. Mademoiselle?’ Jacques
asked in a genial tone.
The girl stared at him sulkily.
‘That depends.’
Jacques’ eyes roved merrily from the girl’s face to Jenny’s.
‘You’ve got some eggs on tap, haven’t you? Yes? And some
cold meat, perhaps?’
The girl extracted a slip of paper from inside her blouse.
‘This is what we have.’ Her tone implied : Take it or leave it.
But Jacques good humour seemed imperturbable.
‘Splendid !’ he exclaimed after reading out the menu, and
casting an enquiring glance at Jenny.
The waitress turned on her heel without a word.
‘Nice disposition, hasn’t she?’ Jacques chuckled and, laughing
still, dropped into the seat facing Jenny.
He rose again immediately to help her to take off her coat.
She wondered whether to take olf her hat as well. ‘Better not,
my hair’ll be dreadfully untidy.’ At once she felt ashamed of
the coquetry behind the thought. Deliberately she took off her
416
MONDAY. JULY 2 "]
hat and purposely refrained from settling her hair after she
had done so.
The sulky waitress came back with a steaming soup-
tureen.
‘Bravo, Mademoiselle,’ cried Jacques, taking the soup-ladle
she handed him. ‘We hadn’t counted on this soup — it smells
delicious !’ Turning to Jenny, he said, ‘Let me help you.’
His high spirits were a little forced; the truth was that this
first meal together disconcerted him almost as much as it did
Jenny. Moreover he could not wholly rid his mind of the
anxieties that had been haunting it all day.
A tarnished mirror behind Jenny doubled all her movements,
enabling Jacques to see beyond the living presence her reflected
self, the graceful play of neck and shoulders.
Conscious that he was watching her, she suddenly said :
‘Jacques, I wonder — do you really, really know what I am
like. It’s dreadful, but I can’t help wondering if you haven’t
a lot of . . . illusions about me.’
She hid with a smile the very real misgivings that came on
her whenever she asked herself: Shall I ever manage to become
as he would have me be? Am I not doomed to disappoint him?
He smiled, too. ‘And if I were to ask you, “Do you really
know the man I am?” What would you reply?’
After a moment’s hesitation she said :
‘I think I’d have to answer “No.” ’
‘But, at the same time, you’d think, “That hasn’t much
importance.” . . . And you’d be right.’
She asserted with a slight nod. Yes, she thought, it hasn’t
much importance. All that will come in its good time. It’s the
sort of idea that haunts the minds of parents — what I thought
j’ust now.
‘We must have confidence in ourselves,’ Jacques said em-
phatically.
She made no reply, and he felt a vague alarm fretting his
heart. But then her face lit up with a look of radiant happiness
that, better than words, swept all his doubts away.
A smell of fried butter began to pervade the room.
‘The Holy Terror’s coming back,’ Jacques whispered.
417
p
SUMMER, 1914
The girl in the pink blouse dumped on the table a sizzling
omelette.
‘A savoury omelette with minced bacon in it!’ Jacques
exclaimed. ‘Couldn’t be better I Is it you who do the
cooking, Mademoiselle?’
‘Well, if you must know, I do.’
‘Congratulations 1’
The girl condescended to smile, and simpered :
‘Oh, the dinners here ain’t nothing much. You oughta come
here for luncheon. Not a seat to be had. But of an evening we
don’t have many customers. Only loving couples.’
Jacques exchanged a merry glance with Jenny. He seemed
genuinely relieved at having coaxed a smile from the ungracious
wench.
‘Now this,’ he said, smacking his lips appropriately, ‘is
something like an omelette!’
Flattered, the waitress gave a chuckle, and bent towards
him as if to impart a secret.
‘Me, I do my own job in my own way, for them as knows a
good thing when they eat it.’
Thrusting her fists in the pockets of her apron, she ambled off.
‘Are we to take that for a tactful compliment?’ Jacques
laughed.
Jenny was in a brown study. The little scene had been
trivial enough, but it had taught her several surprising things.
Obviously Jacques had a gift of creating, with a word or two,
with a smile, by dint of the interest he showed in others, a sort
of temperamental warmth around him, an atmosphere con-
genial to expansiveness and good feeling. None knew this
better than Jenny; in his company even the most secretive,
not to say churlish characters sooner or later broke the taboo
of silence, unbent, and spoke their hearts out. To her such a
gift seemed positively astounding, for unlike Jacques, unlike
Daniel too, she felt hardly any curiosity about others. She
lived shut up in her private world, and so intent was she on
keeping it inviolate, that she took pains to rebuff all who
approached her, and offered to outside contacts as it were a
smooth defensive shell on which nothing could take effect.
418
MONDAY, JULY 27
Thinking of her brother, she was moved to wonder: Mayn’t
this curiosity which urges Jacques to interest himself in anyone
who comes his way have as its complement an inability to
discriminate, to pick and choose?
‘Are you capable of having preferences?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Can you feel more attached to one person than to all others —
and for always?’
At once she realized how clumsily she had put the question,
and a blush rose to her cheek.
Jacques gazed at her, puzzled, trying to fathom the associ-
ation of ideas behind it, as he repeated the question to himself,
anxious above all to give it a straightforward answer. For both
of them had an almost superstitious dread of deceiving each
other even on the most trifling matter; it would be an act of
sacrilege towards their love.
He was on the brink of saying : ‘ “Capable of having prefer-
ences?” How about my friendship with Daniel?’ But that
example would have been misleading, for he knew that time
had impaired their friendship.
‘So far — possibly not,’ he admitted rather grudgingly, and added
almost harshly : ‘But surely that’s no reason for doubting me !’
‘I don’t doubt you,’ she answered hastily, in a shaky voice.
He was struck by her woebegone air and realized too late
that her extreme sensitiveness called for the utmost prudence
on his part. As he was pondering what to say, the waitress
appeared with the next course and he confined himself to a
tenderly affectionate look that was an obvious plea to be
forgiven for his tactlessness.
Her eyes were fixed on him. The rapidity with which Jacques’
moods ‘swung from one extreme to another dismayed her, as
a possible danger, but ravished her as well — though why it
should do so was beyond her telling. Perhaps she saw in it the
indication of an exceptionally strong personality, an untamed
force. With a quaint thrill of pride she smiled to herself, ‘My
Cave Man !’ The gloom had lifted from her face, and once more
she felt possessed by the deep certitude of happiness that for
the last two days had been pervading — and remoulding — her
whole existence.
419
SUMMER, 1914
No sooner had the waitress gone than Jacques exclaimed :
‘How frail it is as yet, your confidence in me !’
In his tone there was not an atom of reproach ; only regret,
and something of remorse — for he could not forget that his
behaviour in the past fully entitled Jenny to mistrust him.
She guessed at once what was passing in his mind and made
haste to dissipate, as best as she could, those bitter memories.
‘The trouble is,’ she said, ‘that I’m so badly prepared for
trusting anybody. I can’t remember ever having . . . ’ — she
groped for the word, and one of Jacques’ expressions came to
her lips — ‘having experienced peace of mind. Even as a child.
That’s how I am,’ she smiled. ‘Or, rather, that’s how I used to
be.’ In a low voice, her eyes bent on the tablecloth, she added :
‘I’ve never told that to anyone before.’ Impulsively, after a
glance towards the kitchen door, she stretched her arms towards
Jacques across the table; the delicately moulded hands, he saw,
were trembling. She felt unutterably his, yet her one desire was
to be his even more, to lose herself beyond recall in him.
‘I was like you,’ he whispered. ‘Alone, always alone, and
never, never at peace.’
‘I’ve been through that, too.’ Gently she withdrew her
hands.
‘Sometimes I’d fancy myself superior to the common run,
and fuddle myself with pride. And at other times I’d tell
myself I was ugly, ignorant, a hopeless dunce — and wallow
in humility !’
‘I was just the same.’
‘. . . always, everywhere out of place.’
‘So was I.’
‘The slave of my temperament.’
‘So was I. And with no hope of breaking away from it, of
getting to be like other people.’
‘And if in some black moments I didn’t utterly despair of
myself,’ he exclaimed in a sudden burst of gratitude, ‘do you
know to whom I owed it?’
For an instant she had a wild hope that he would say, ‘To
you !’ But Jacques went on :
‘It was Daniel I owed it. Our friendship was founded on
420
MONDAY, JULY 27
mutual trust. It was Daniel’s affection and his trust that
saved me.’
‘It saved me too,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Daniel was my
only friend.’
It seemed that they could never have enough of explaining
themselves each to each — each through the other’s lips; they
gazed spell-bound at one another with rapturous, insatiable
eyes, eagerly watching for the other to smile a benison, aj’oyful
affirmation of their perfect mutual understanding. It was like
a glorious miracle, this intuitive, effortless interplay of mind
on mind, the discovery they were so amazingly alike. And it
seemed to them that their store of confidences was inex-
haustible and nothing in the world just now had more impor-
tance than this reciprocal discovery of each other’s secrets.
‘Yes, I owe it to Daniel that I didn’t go hopelessly under.
And of course to Antoine, too,’ he added as an afterthought.
A look of coldness she could not disguise settled on Jenny’s
face. He observed the change at once and, perturbed by it,
threw her a questioning glance.
As no answer came, he asked point blank: ‘Do you know
my brother at all well?’ He was ready to launch out into an
enthusiastic eulogy of Antoine.
She all but frankly said, ‘I loathe him !’ — but thought better
of it.
‘I don’t like his eyes.’
‘What about his eyes?’
She wondered how to explain herself without wounding
Jacques. Still, she was determined to keep nothing back from
him, painful though it might be.
Greatly mystified, Jacques asked again :
‘What have you got against his eyes?’
She pondered for a while.
‘They give an impression of not knowing . . . of having ceased
to know the difference between right and wrong.’
A curious comment, and it left Jacques puzzled. But just
then a remark Daniel had made to him one day, speaking of
Antoine, crossed his mind. ‘Do you know what attracts me
about your brother? It’s his open-mindedness.’ What Daniel
421
SUMMER, 1914
admired in Antoine was his capacity for appraising any prob-
lem on its own merits, as if he were examining an anatomical
specimen — quite apart from any ethical preconceptions. It
was a mental outlook that inevitably appealed to the de-
scendant of a long line of Huguenots.
Jacques looked as if he wanted to hear more from her, but
she met his gaze with eyes so calm and secret that he dared
not question her further. ‘Inviolable !’ he thought.
The waitress had come up again to change the plates.
‘Some cheese? Dessert? Two nice strong cups of coffee?’
‘Nothing more for me, thanks,’ Jenny said.
‘One coffee, please.’
They waited for the girl to bring it, before resuming freely
their conversation. Jacques, who was watching Jenny furtively,
was struck once again by the contrast between her eyes and her
face; the expression of the eyes was so much older than her
features, which had the tender immaturity of a young child’s.
‘Let me have another look at your eyes,’ he said, leaning
across the table with a smile to make amends for the inquisi-
tion. ‘I’d like to learn them, to really know them. They’re so
marvellously limpid, ice-blue, crystal-clear. And the pupils keep
changing all the time. Please don’t move ! It’s fascinating.’
She too gazed at him, but unsmiling, a little wearily.
‘Do you know,’ he went on, ‘whenever you stare hard at
something the iris contracts, and the pupil dwindles away till
it’s like a tiny round hole punched in the blue surface. And what
tremendous will-power there is in your eyes !’
It flashed on him that Jenny might prove an invaluable
helper in his life’s work. And suddenly all his anxieties surged
back into his mind; instinctively he glanced up at the wall-
clock beside him.
Seeing a frown settle on his brows, Jenny felt suddenly afraid.
‘What are you thinking about, Jacques?’ she whispered
nervously.
He thrust back his forelock with an angry movement ;
unwittingly he had clenched his fists.
‘I’m thinking that at this moment there are in Europe
perhaps a hundred men who foresee what’s coming, who are
422
MONDAY, JULY 27
Straining every nerve to save their fellows from disaster — and
they can’t succeed in making themselves heard by the men they
want to save. Can you imagine anything more grotesquely
tragic ! Will they manage to rouse the masses from their apathy?
And will the masses . . .?’
He went on speaking and Jenny seemed to listen, but her
thoughts were far away. From the moment of seeing Jacques
glance towards the clock, her attention had begun to wander,
she had been unable to still the tumult of her heart. Three whole
days without him! Mastering the onset of panic that at all
costs she was determined to conceal, she gave herself up so
hungrily to the sad delight of feeling him beside her, if for
j'ust these few brief minutes more, that all she could do was to
watch each fleeting change of his expression, each flutter of his
brows, each sudden gleam that kindled in his eyes. And,
watching, she did not try to follow what he said, but let her
mind grow blurred under the rush of words and theories that
seemed crepitating round her like flurries of bright sparks.
Suddenly Jacques stopped short.
‘You’re not listening!’
Her lashes quivered, she flushed.
‘Sorry . . . !’
Impulsively, like a child asking to be forgiven, she held out
her hand. He clasped it, turned it over, and pressed his lips
to her palm. Suddenly he felt a tremor ripple down the slender
arm, and realized with a strange thrill, such as he had never
known before, that the little hand, not merely yielding passively,
was pressing itself fondly to his lips.
But time was passing, and there was something he had still
to tell her.
‘Jenny, there’s something I absolutely must let you know —
to-night. Last year, after my father’s death, I refused to hear
anything about — about my share of the estate. I didn’t want
to touch a sou of that money. Well, yesterday I changed my
mind.’
He paused. Startled by his words, she had shrunk back a
little, lowering her eyes; despite herself, all sorts of confused,
contradictory fancies were racing through her head.
423
SUMMER, 1914
‘I intend to take delivery of the money and turn it over to
the International Party Fund, to be used for their anti-war
campaign.’
She drew a deep breath ; the colour came back to her cheeks.
Why, she wondered, was he telling her about it?
‘You approve of this intention, don’t you?’
Instinctively Jenny shunned his eyes. What thought was at
the back of his head, for him to emphasize as he had done
that word ‘approve’? It almost looked as if he were granting
her the right to control his conduct. She gave an almost
imperceptible nod, and looked up timidly. He was careful
to maintain an interrogative expression.
‘So far,’ he went on, ‘I’ve always managed to earn my
living, writing articles. The absolute minimum, I admit —
but that’s no matter. The people amongst whom I live are all
quite poor; I’m like them, and that’s as it should be.’
He drew a deep breath. When he spoke again, a feeling of
embarrassment made his voice sound almost gruff.
‘If you, Jenny, can put up with this . . . this humble existence
I haven’t any fears about our future.’
She bowed her head. It was the first time he had broached
the subject of their future, their life in common; and the
rapturous vision opening up before her made her inarticulate. . .
He waited for her to raise her head; then, when he saw the
radiant ecstasy transfiguring her face, he murmured :
‘Thank you.’
The waitress brought the bill. After paying it he looked up
again at the clock.
‘Nearly twenty to. I haven’t even time enough to see you
home.’
Jenny had risen without waitingforasign from him. Suddenly
she remembered with a sinking heart: ‘He’s going away.
Where will he be to-morrow . . .? Three days to wait! Three
intolerable days I’
As he was helping her into her coat, she turned abruptly
and gazed deep into his eyes.
‘Tell me, Jacques . . . Anyhow it isn’t dangerous, is it?’
‘What?’ he asked, to gain time.
424
MONDAY, JULY 27
He recalled the wording of Richardley’s letter. He wished
neither to lie, nor to alarm her. Forcing a smile to his lips,
he answered :
‘Dangerous? I don’t expect so.’
A glint of terror showed in her eyes. But she dropped her
eyelids at once and, after a moment, bravely returned his smile.
‘She’s perfect,’ he told himself
Without speaking, side by side, they walked to the nearest
Underground Station. At the top of the stairs Jacques halted.
Jenny, who had gone down the first step, turned round and
faced him. The moment had come . . . He placed both hands
on her frail shoulders.
‘Till Thursday, then. Friday at the latest.’
He gazed at her with troubled eyes, on the brink of saying :
‘You are mine. Let’s stay together, come with me.’ Then he
remembered the crowd, the likelihood of street-fighting. Very
quickly, under his breath, he said :
‘You must go now. Good-bye, dear.’
His lips parted in an ambiguous flutter — not quite a smile,
not quite a kiss. Then abruptly he withdrew his hands, gave
her a last lingering look, and was gone.
23
Monday, July 2y
JACQUES ATTENDS A MASS DEMONSTRATION ON THE BOULEVARDS
There was still some daylight left ; the air was sultry, laden
with menaces of storm.
The boulevards presented an unwonted aspect ; all the
steel shutters of the shops were down and most of the cafes were
closed. Under police orders the few that had stayed open had
425 p*
SUMMER, 1914
cleared their terraces of chairs and tables, lest these should
be used for building barricades, and to leave a clear field for
charges of the mounted police. People were flocking up to
watch the demonstration. Few private cars were about, though
some buses were still plying, honking without cease.
The crowds were particularly thick along the boulevards
Saint-Martin and Magenta, and round the C.G.T. head-
quarters. A never-ending stream of men and women was
pouring down from Belleville Hill. Workmen, young and old,
in their working kit, who had come in from the suburbs and
outlying parts of Paris, were gathering in groups that steadily
grew denser. In every street-bay, at every corner, in all the
roads closed for repair, squads of policemen were mustered in
black swarms round police-cars ready to transport them, at a
moment’s notice, to any danger-point.
Vanheede and Mithoerg were waiting for Jacques in a
public-house on the Rue du Faubourg du Temple.
On the Place de la Republique all traffic had been stopped
and the whole square was a seething mass of people. Jacques
and his friends did their best to elbow a way across the serried
crowd and join the editorial staff of the Humanite, who, Jacques
knew, were posted at the foot of the central monument. But
already it was impossible to get through to the central portion
of the square where the vanguard of the procession was
forming up.
Suddenly with a loud rustle, like a flurry of wind rippling
the sea of heads, some fifty banners, invisible till now, soared
aloft over the eddying crowd. Then with the ponderous
deliberation of some monstrous reptile straightening out its coils,
the procession got under way, and moved off towards the
Porte Saint-Martin. In a few minutes, like a lava-stream
finding its natural channel, the surging mass had flooded the
ravine-like boulevard, and, swelled at every moment by
affluents from side streets, was slowly rolling westwards.
Wedged in the crowd, half stifled by the heat, Jacques and
his friends had linked arms, so as not to get separated. Their
ears were buzzing with the low continuous roar of the human
flood that bore them on, sometimes immobilizing them for a
426
MONDAY, JULY 27
moment, then sweeping them ahead, or tossing them this side
and that towards the sombre house-fronts where every window
was a mass of craning heads. Night had fallen and the arc-
lamps shed a wan, tragic glow upon the teeming chaos of the
streets.
‘Yes,’ Jacques jubilated, in an ecstasy of joy and pride,
‘they’d best take heed ! A whole nation has risen up to bar the
way to war. The masses have understood. They’ve answered
the call to action. If only Rumelles could see them now!’
A longer halt than usual penned them against the pillared
frontage of the Gymnase Theatre. Then came a confused
shouting in front, giving the impression that the vanguard,
on entering the Boulevard Poissonniere, had come up against
an obstacle.
After ten minutes had elapsed Jacques lost patience.
‘Come along!’ he said, taking little Vanheede by the hand.
Mithoerg followed, grumbling to himself, as they threaded
their way through the crowd, fetching a compass round
impenetrable groups, swerving left and right, but steadily
gaining ground.
‘There’s a counter-demonstration,’ someone informed them.
‘The League of Patriots is blocking the road ahead of us.’
Jacques let go Vanheede’s hand and scrambled up on to the
coping of a shop-front, to see what was happening.
The banners had come to a halt at the cross-roads in front,
beside the red Matin building. The front ranks of Patriots and
Socialists were slinging abuse at each other and not a few had
come to blows. There were some vigorous affrays in progress,
but their area was limited. The crowd was in an ugly mood,
fists were being brandished on all sides. Little black squads
of police had forced their way into the mass of people but,
though they made a show of activity, did not seemed disposed
to intervene just yet. Then somebody waved a white flag, and,
as if it were a signal, the Patriots broke into a rousing Marseill-
aise, while the Socialists riposted with the Internationale, in a
swelling chorus that presently drowned all other sounds with
its tempestuous refrain. Suddenly the dense mass of people
began to surge and eddy like a river in spate. From side-streets
427
SUMMER, 1914
right and left, detachments of police led by Inspectors had
charged into the mass, so as to clear the cross-roads. The
fighting redoubled in intensity; Marseillaise and Internationale
died down and swelled up again, cut across by shouts —
Berlin!’ ‘Vive la France!’ ‘Down with war!’ Driving ahead into
the thick of the fray, the police were belabouring the pacifists,
who retaliated with a will. Whistles shrilled, arms and sticks
were brandished, cries rose: ‘To hell with the police!’ ‘Dirty
swine !’ ‘Give ’em what for !’ Jacques saw the constables fling
themselves on a demonstrator, who resisted vigorously, lay him
out and sling him into one of the police-cars.
Jacques was furious at being too far away to take a hand.
Perhaps, he thought, if he wormed his way along the houses,
he might get through to the fighting-line. In the nick of time
he remembered his mission, the train to catch. To-night he was
on active service; he had no right to gratify such impulses.
A low reverberation echoed up the Boulevard; in the dis-
tance helmets glinted. A squadron of mounted police was trot-
ting down the street towards the demonstrators.
‘Look out! They’re going to charge !’
‘Let’s get out of this !’
The crowd round Jacques surged back in terror. But it was
caught between the onset of the mounted police and the
vast rearguard of the procession still pressing forward, making
retreat impossible. Perched on his ledge, as on a rock lashed
by wind and wave, Jacques gripped the iron shutter to prevent
himself from being dislodged by the stampede of panic-stricken
men and women immediately below. He looked for his com-
panions; they had vanished. Anyhow they knew where to
find him and would come back if it could be managed. ‘What a
good thing I didn’t bring Jenny with me!’ The mere thought
of it made him shudder.
Horses were plunging wildly in the forefront of the crowd,
knocking pedestrians over. Living jetsam — ^faces pale with
fury or affright, blood-stained foreheads — bobbed up amongst
the eddies. It was impossible to make out what actually was
happening.
The central portion of the roadway had been cleared ; under
428
MONDAY, JULY 27
the combined onslaught of mounted constabulary and city
police the pacifists had been thrown back. The roadway was
littered with sticks and hats and wreckage, amongst which
police officers with silver badges and some men in mufti, pre-
sumably plain-clothes men from headquarters, were moving
to and fro. Round them a cordon of police was gradually
widening out in all directions till presently the full width of the
boulevard was occupied by the authorities.
Like a restive flock with the sheep-dogs snapping at their
heels which, after a spell of huddled-up confusion, turns about
and scuttles in the opposite direction, the crowd turned tail
and stampeded towards the Boulevards Sebastopol and
Strasbourg.
‘Fall in at the Drouot corner !’ someone shouted.
It struck Jacques that it would be imprudent to linger where
he was ; should he be arrested, the only identity papers he had
with him were in the name of J. S. Eberle, Student, of Geneva.
He worked his way into the Rue d’Hauteville, where he
stopped and pondered. There was little hope of getting in
touch again with Mithoerg and Vanheede. What should be
his next move? If he made for the Rue Drouot and took part
in the demonstration, there was the chance he might be
arrested, or quite likely, jammed between two police cordons
and have to miss his train. He glanced at his watch. Five to
eleven. The wisest course, however distasteful it might be, was
obviously to turn his back on the demonstration and make
for the Gare du Nord.
Some minutes later he was walking past the La Fayette
Square, in front of St. Vincent-de-Paul’s Church. In that little
garden, he and Jenny . . . He felt an impulse to make a pil-
grimage, as to some hallowed shrine, to the bench where they
had sat and talked. But the steps leading up to it were black
with police.
His throat was parched. It came to his mind that quite near,
in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, there was a little tavern
patronized by socialists of the district. He could spend half
an hour or so there before going to catch his train.
The back room in which the militants usually gathered was
429
SUMMER, 1914
empty. But in the public bar, some half dozen customers were
discussing with the landlord, a socialist of long standing, the
latest news from that part of Paris, where some serious street-
fighting had taken place. Near the Gare de I’Est an anti-war
meeting had been energetically dispersed — only to form again
in front of the C.G.T. headquarters. There a veritable riot
had ensued, necessitating a police charge. A number of people,
it seemed, had been wounded, and the police-stations of the
district were full of people who had been arrested. There was
a rumour that the Superintendent of Police in charge of the
men on duty along the boulevards had been stabbed. One of
the customers, who had come from Passy, said that he had
seen the Strasburg Statue at the Place de la Concorde hung
with tricolour flags and guarded by a group of young patriots
under police protection. Another customer, an elderly work-
man with a grizzled moustache, whose coat had been torn in
the fray and was now being mended by the landlord’s wife,
declared that several fragments of the procession that had been
dispersed on the Boulevards had formed up again at the
Bourse and were marching on the Palais-Bourbon, headed by
a red flag and shouting ‘Down with War!’
‘Aye, Down with War I’ the landlord muttered. He had seen
service in ’70, and taken part in the Commune. With an
angry toss of his grey locks he added : ‘A fat lot of use it is,
shouting “Down with War 1 ” to-day. It’s like as if you shouted
“Stop the rain 1” after the storm has broken.’
This was not to the liking of the old workman, who after a
long pujRr at his pipe retorted :
‘It’s never too late, Charles. If you’d seen ’em this evening
at the Place de la Republique. Thick as a shoal of herrings
they was.’
‘I was there,’ Jacques put in, and moved towards the old
fellow.
‘Well, if you was there, young ’un, you can back me up
when I say there’s never been anything like it before. And
I’ve seen some demonstrations in my time, my lad ! I was
there when they raised hell because of Ferrer’s execution, we
were a hundred thousand strong that day. And I was in the
430
MONDAY, JULY 27
indignation meeting against the military convict prisons, for
the release of Roussel, you remember — we were a hundred
thousand strong that time as well. And there were more than
a hundred thousand of us at the Pre Saint-Gervais, to demon-
strate against the three-years military service law. But to-night
— how many do you think we were? Three hundred thousand?
Half a million? A million? All I know is there was a solid mass
of us from Belleville to the Madeleine, yelling “Vive la Paix/”
like one man. No, boys, I ain’t never seen anything like that
before, and I’m an old hand at the game. Lucky the cops
hadn’t brought their guns or, by the look of it, there’d have
been blood running in the gutters to-night. To-night, I tell
you, if we’d had the nerve, the Constitution was a goner;
only somehow, blast it, we missed the bus! Aye, Charles,
when we marched off from the Place de la Republique with
all our flags flying — if at that moment some bloke had shown
up that had the guts — a Leader, what? — he’d have led us
straight to the Elysee, and the Revolution’d be begun
to-night.’
Beaming with pleasure, Jacques gazed at the veteran fighter.
‘It’s postponed, that’s all. We’ll pull it off in a day or two,
never you fear 1’
As he walked to the station, his heart was full of joy. He had
no trouble in getting a third-class ticket to Berlin.
On the platform he had a surprise; Vanheede and Mithoerg
were there to say good-bye to him. Vanheede had lost his hat;
he was looking pale, the picture of dejection. Mithoerg, on the
other hand, was flushed and furious; his clenched fists bulged
his pockets. He had been arrested and given a good drubbing
by the police. Then, as they were dragging him to a police-car,
there had been a scuffle and he had managed to break away.
He described his adventure in a mixture of French and German,
spluttering and spitting, and rolling rageful eyes behind
his glasses.
‘Don’t stay here,’ Jacques said. ‘We don’t want to attract
attention, you know.’
Vanheede had clasped Jacques’ hand with sudden fervour;
on the blank, blind-seeming face the pale lashes fluttered
431
SUMMER, 1914
nervously, as in a tone of passionate entreaty he whispered:
‘Do be careful, Baulthy !’
To hide his emotion, Jacques gave a cheerful laugh.
‘See you at Brussels, on Wednesday !’
At that same moment Anne was standing in her boudoir,
dressed to go out, with the telephone-receiver to her ear, and
gazing with misted eyes into space.
Antoine had switched off all the lights and, after a perusal of
the evening papers, was dropping off to sleep. The buzz of the
telephone that Leon placed on the bedside table every night
made him sit up in bed.
A far-away, tender voice murmured in his ear. ‘Is that you,
Tony dear?’
‘Hullo? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing really.’
‘There must be! Tell me what it is, please.’ He sounded
anxious.
‘There’s nothing wrong, I assure you. I only wanted to . . .
to hear your voice. In bed already?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you asleep, darling?’
‘Yes . . . well, almost. So everything’s all right? Sure you’re
not worrying over anything?’
‘Not a thing,’ she laughed. ‘But it’s nice of you to feel anxious
like that about me. I only wanted to hear your voice, that’s
all. Can’t you understand that, Tony dear, that one can get
a sudden longing to ... to hear a voice?’
Propped on an elbow, scowling towards the light that
stung his eyes, he nursed his growing irritation.
‘Tony?’
'‘What is it?'
‘Nothing. Only — I love you, Tony darling. If you only
knew how I’d like to be in your arms to-night ... at this very
moment !’
Some interminable seconds passed before Antoine spoke.
‘Look here, Anne! Didn’t I make it clear that . . .?’
432
TUESDAY, JULY 28
‘Yes, yes,’ she broke in. ‘I know. Don’t pay any attention. I
only wanted to say Good-night, dearest . . . ’
‘Good-night.’
He hung up first. The brittle click jarred her like a blow.
Shutting her eyes, she kept the receiver to her ear, waiting for
a miracle.
Then ‘I’m a fool,’ she exclaimed almost loudly.
Absurdly she had hoped — had managed to convince herself
— he would reply, ‘Come along to “our place” at once. I’ll be
there right away.’
Flinging her gloves, hat, bag on to the table she adjured
herself: ‘You’re a fool! An utter fool!’ And suddenly, starkly,
the truth that she had kept at bay forced itself upon her: she
was the miserable victim of her need for him — her need of him
who had no need of her !
24
Tuesday, July 28
ON SECRET SERVICE AT BERLIN, JACQ_UES VISITS VORLAUF
After an all but sleepless night, at about eight, when the
train stopped at Hamm, Jacques got out to buy the morning
papers.
With one accord the German Press censured Austria for
having declared herself at war with Servia. Even such right-
wing papers as the Pan-Germanist Post and Krupp’s organ,
the Rhineland Gazette, ‘deplored’ the high-handed methods of
Austrian diplomacy. Salient headlines announced the Kaiser’s
hasty return and that of the Crown Prince. Paradoxically
enough, most papers, after mentioning the fact that on the
Emperor’s arrival at Potsdam he had held forthwith a long
433
SUMMER, 1914
and important conference with his naval and military Chiefs
of Staff, expressed high hopes that, thanks to the Kaiser’s
influence, peace would be preserved.
When Jacques went back to the carriage he found his fellow-
passengers had likewise bought the morning papers and were
discussing the latest news. There were three of them : a young
clergyman whose thoughtful eyes turned oftener to the open
window than to the paper lying on his knees; an elderly,
white-bearded man who appeared to be a Jew; and a fat,
jovial German in the fifties with a smooth-shaven face and
cranium. Catching Jacques’ eye with a wave of the Berliner
Tageszeitung he was holding, he addressed him in German.
T see you’re interested, too, in politics. You’re a foreigner,
aren’t you?’
‘Swiss.’
‘French Swiss?’
‘From Geneva.’
‘That means you get a closer view of the French than we do.
The individual Frenchman is a delightful fellow, don’t you
think so? Why is it that as a nation they’re so obnoxious?’
Jacques turned the question with a non-committal smile.
The loquacious German made sure of having caught the
clergyman’s and then the Jew’s eye, before proceeding.
‘Personally, I’ve travelled a lot in France — in the way of
business — and I’ve plenty of friends in that country. For quite
a while I imagined that our desire for peace would win the
French round to our way of thinking, and we’d end by burying
the hatchet. But no, there’s nothing to be done with those fire-
eaters across the frontier; they’ve got “revenge” on the brain!
That, of course, explains the line they’re taking now.’
‘If Germany’s so keen on peace,’ Jacques ventured to observe,
‘why doesn’t she prove it to better effect to-day — by frankly
insisting on her ally, Austria, keeping the peace?’
‘Why, that’s what she’s doing — there’s no doubt about it!
Read the papers, man! But look at France. If France isn’t
spoiling for a war, why does she back up Russia like she’s
doing now? You’ve only got to read Poincare’s speeches at
St. Petersburg. Yes, it’s with France that the decision rests
434
TUESDAY, JULY 28
— for peace or war. If to-morrow Russia was informed she
couldn’t count on the support of the French Army, she’d
climb down at once, she’d agree to arbitration, and we’d hear
no more talk about a war.’
The clergyman nodded approval; the man with the white
beard likewise. He had taught Law for several years at
Strasburg and cordially detested the Alsatians.
With a friendly gesture Jacques declined the fat man’s offer
of a cigar. For safety’s sake he preferred not to be drawn into
an argument, and feigned to be deep in the perusal of his
papers.
The Professor of Law began to air his views. His opinions on
Bismarck’s policy in the years following 1870 were obviously
prejudiced and superficial. He was, or pretended to be, unaware
of the old Chancellor’s desire to crush France once for all by
another defeat in the field; he seemed determined to recall
only the friendly moves made by the German Empire towards
the French Republic — to the exclusion of all others. Under
his lead the conversation took an historical turn. All three
men were in accord, and the ideas they voiced were those of
the great majority of.Germans.
To their mind it was plain as daylight that until recent
years Germany had persistently endeavoured to meet France
half way, and farther. The conduct of Bismarck himself was a
case in point. Conciliatory to the point of rashness, he had per-
mitted the vanquished nation to make a rapid recovery, though
he might quite well have hindered it ; all he would have needed
to do was to put a stop to the colony-grabbing activities that
had become a sort of mania with the French soon after their
defeat. The Triple Alliance was not aimed at any outside
Power ; it had come into being not as a military pact, but as a
covenant between three monarchs who, alarmed by the
revolutionary unrest pervading Europe, mutually guaranteed
the conservation of established order. During the fifteen years
from 1894 to 1909, and even after the Franco-Russian alliance
had been concluded, Germany had repeatedly invited France
to co-operate in settling the political problems of the day —
especially those relating to Africa. In 1904 and 1905 the
435
SUMMER, 1914
Government had made effort after effort, in the most cordial
spirit, to come to a friendly understanding with France.
Invariably France had turned down the Kaiser’s appeals for
an entente, and had met the most tempting propositions with
mistrust, with perfidious quibbles, sometimes with open
threats. If then the nature of the Triple Alliance had altered,
the blame for it rested with the French who, by their unaccount-
able military alliance with Czarism, by the line their ministers
(especially Delcasse) were taking, made it plain as daylight
that the whole trend of their foreign policy was hostile to
Germany and its object the ‘encircling’ of the Central Powers.
Thus the Triple Alliance had perforce become a weapon of
defence against the activities of the Triple Entente, which
openly flaunted itself in the world’s eyes as a cabal of fili-
busters. The term was none too strong, and it was justified by
facts: thanks to the Triple Entente France had been able to
lay hands on her vast Moroccan territories, Russia had been
able to promote a Balkan League which would permit her one
day to expand as far as Constantinople; and, lastly, thanks
to the Triple Entente, England had been enabled to make her
sea-power invincibly supreme in every quarter of the globe.
The one obstacle to this blatantly imperialistic drive was the
Germanic coalition, and all that now was needed to make
absolute the world-power of the Triple Entente was the dis-
ruption of that coalition. An opportunity for this had now
arisen. France and Russia had promptly snatched at it; by
exploiting the unrest in the Balkans and Austria’s rash pro-
cedure, they aimed at making Germany repudiate her one
and only faithful ally. Once embroiled with Austria, Germany
would stand alone, surrounded by foes; France would have
achieved the object of ten years’ intrigues.
Such were the views expounded by the churchman and the
Jewish professor. The fat German, however, opined that the
Triple Entente had more aggressive plans in view. Russia
was set on a war that would leave Germany crushed and
prostrate.
‘Every German,’ he said, ‘who watches events with an obser-
vant eye has found his confidence in peace ebbing away year
436
TUESDAY, JULY 28
by year. He has seen Russia building one strategic railway
after another in Poland; France increasing her man-power
and piling up armaments ; England entering into a naval pact
with Russia. The only possible explanation of these activities
is that the Triple Entente intends to make sure of its supremacy
by defeating the Triple Alliance in the field. They are deter-
mined, in fact, to force a war on us. If war doesn’t break out
this year, it certainly will in 1916, or 1917 at the latest. But
he smiled, ‘the Triple Entente is counting its chickens be-
fore they’re hatched. The German army is prepared. It’s a
dangerous game to play, challenging the might of Germany !’
The old Professor approved with a smile, the clergyman
with an earnest nod. With the fat man’s last dictum they were
wholeheartedly at one.
Jacques had stayed in Berlin on several occasions. He
decided to alight at the ‘Zoo’ station. In the West End there
was less risk of running into people he knew.
His mysterious rendez-vous at the Potsdamer Platz was not
due till two hours later, and he decided to take cover mean-
while with Karl Vorlauf, who lived near by, in Uhlandstrasse.
This man was a friend of Liebknecht and a good comrade of
proved dependability. He was a dentist and Jacques had
every chance of finding him at home at this hour.
In the waiting-room into which he was shown two people
were already seated: an old lady and a young student. When
Vorlauf opened the door to summon the old lady, he shot a
quick glance at Jacques but gave no sign of recognition. Twenty
minutes passed ; then Vorlauf appeared again and beckoned to
the student. Almost immediately he reappeared by himself.
‘You Jacques !’ he exclaimed.
Though he was quite young, a strand of greying hair ribboned
his brown curls. The dark eyes, deep-set and faceted with glints of
gold, had still the feverish brilliance Jacques so well remembered.
‘I’m on a mission,’ Jacques said in a low voice. ‘I’ve just
come from the train and have an hour in hand. Got to lie low
meanwhile.’
437
SUMMER, 1914
Vorlauf showed no surprise. ‘I’ll let Martha know you’re
here. Come along !’
He led Jacques to a bedroom ; a woman was sitting at the
window sewing, with her back to the light. The room was cool.
Jacques saw two beds side by side, a table piled with books, a
basket on the floor with two Siamese cats sleeping in it. And
suddenly a picture rose before him of a room, cosy and calm
like this one, the room which some day he would share with
Jenny.
Composedly Frau Vorlauf stuck her needle in the material
on her lap, and rose. The flattish face, crowned with a wealth
of flaxen tresses, conveyed an impression of placidity combined
with energy. Jacques had often met her in Berlin, at socialist
gatherings, which she always attended with her husband.
‘Stay as long as you like,’ Vorlauf said. ‘I’ve got to go back
to my work.’
‘Do have a cup of coffee.’ Frau Verlauf put the coffee tray
in front of Jacques. ‘Help yourself, won’t you? I suppose you’ve
come from Geneva.’
‘No, from Paris.’
‘Really?’ She sounded interested. ‘Liebknecht thinks that
just now a great deal depends on France. He says the majority
of your proletariat are definitely against a war and that you’ve
the luck of having a socialist minister in your cabinet to-day.’
‘Viviani? He’s an ^AJ-socialist.’
‘If France chose, what a wonderful example she could set
the world !’
Jacques described to her the demonstration on the boulevards.
He had no trouble in understanding all she said to him, but he
expressed himself in German rather laboriously.
‘There was some street-fighting here as well,’ she said.
‘About a hundred people were wounded and five or six hundred
were arrested. This evening there’ll be more disturbances.
Over fifty public anti-war meetings are taking place to-day, in
every part of the city. At nine o’clock there’s a mass meeting
at the Brandenburger Tor.’
‘In France,’ Jacques remarked, ‘we have to contend with the
shocking apathy of the middle class.’
438
TUESDAY, JULY 28
Vorlauf had j'ust come back.
‘It’s the same thing in Germany,’ he said. ‘Nobody seems to
bother. Would you believe it, urgent though the danger is, no
one in the Reichstag has moved, so far, that the Board of
Foreign Relations should be convened! The Nationalists are
conscious that the Government’s behind them, and the ferocity
of their press campaign is simply incredible. Every day they
clamour for martial law to be declared in Berlin, for the arrest
of all the leaders of the opposition, for a ban on pacifist meet-
ings. But there’s no need to worry; we shall put a spoke in
their wheel! Everywhere, in every town in Germany, the
proletariat is stirring, agitating, in revolt. It’s like those glorious
days of October, 1912, when with Ledeboer and the rest of them,
we roused the masses with the slogan “War against war!” The
Government realized then that the outbreak of a conflict
between the capitalist nations would be a signal for immediate
revolutionary counter-action thoughout Europe. So they took
fright, and put the brakes on. This time, too, we’ll pull it off.’
Jacques had risen. ‘What? Got to go already?’
Jacques nodded and took his leave of Frau Vorlauf
‘War against war!’ she cried. Her eyes were sparkling.
‘Yes, this time too, the cause of peace will triumph,’ Vorlauf
assured Jacques as he escorted him to the hall. ‘But — ^for how
long? I’ve come to think, like many others, that a world war’s
inevitable, and that the Revolution won’t make good till we’ve
been through one . . . ’
Jacques was reluctant to take leave of Vorlauf before hearing
his opinion on one of the problems foremost in his thoughts.
‘What exactly is known in Germany as to the understanding
between Vienna and Berlin? What’s the point of all this play-
acting they’ve been indulging in for the benefit of the rest of
Europe, and what’s been going on behind the scenes? In your
opinion, is there complicity between them — ^yes or no?’
Vorlauf chuckled.
‘Oh, you Frenchman!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s so typically French, that “Yes or No?” of yours. You
Frenchmen have a perfect mania for clean-cut distinctions,
439
SUMMER, 1914
you want every notion to be hard and fast! As if a clean-cut
idea were a priori, a correct one I’
It was Jacques’ turn to laugh. Still, the remark had struck
home ; he fell to wondering to what extent his friend’s view was
justified, and how far it applied to him personally.
Meanwhile Vorlauf’s face had grown earnest again.
‘Complicity? Well, that’s according! If you mean: “Are
they consciously, callously, working hand in glove?” I’m not so
sure of it. My answer to your question would be: Yes and No.
Of course there was some humbug in the surprise our politicians
affected at the ultimatum. But, mind you, only a spice of it.
The general view is that the Austrian Chancellor bamboozled
our representatives, just as he bamboozled the other European
chancelleries, and the most that can be said against Bethmann-
Hollweg is that he acted with shocking imprudence. They say
that what Berchtold submitted to the Wilhelmstrasse was an
abridged, innocuous version of the ultimatum and, what’s
more, to make sure of enlisting Germany’s support, that he
promised it would be toned down still further. Bethmann
believed him. In all good faith, if with extreme unwisdom,
Germany pledged her word. When Bethmann, Jagow, and the
Kaiser learned the real terms of the ultimatum, they were
appalled.’
‘When did they learn its terms?’
‘On the twenty-second or perhaps the twenty-third.’
‘That’s the whole point ! If it was on the twenty-second — as
I was assured in Paris — the German Foreign Office had still
time to bring pressure to bear on Vienna before the despatch
of the ultimatum. And it neglected to do so!’
‘No, Thibault, I sincerely believe that Berlin had too short
notice; even on the night of the twenty-second it was too late.
Too late to get Austria to modify her terms ; too late to repudiate
publicly the line that Austria was taking. Germany had been
jockeyed into a false position and the only way open to her
to save her face was to bluff it out and by intimidating Europe,
to win — by hook or by crook — the foolhardy diplomatic game
into which she had been inveigled. That is what people here
are saying, anyhow. "And it’s even alleged — this, too, on
440
TUESDAY, JULY 28
excellent authority — that until yesterday morning the Kaiser
fancied he had brought off a masterstroke, that he could
count on Russia’s standing out.’
‘Oh, come now, that’s absurd !’ Jacques exclaimed. ‘He must
have known quite well that Russia was spoiling for a war.’
‘Well, it’s positively asserted that not till yesterday did our
Government realize the gravity of the situation ; that they had
been cornered. And that’ — his face lit up with juvenile en-
thusiasm — ‘is why the demonstrations taking place to-night
are so important. When a Government’s still undecided, such
an outburst of popular feeling may very well tip the scale.
You’ll attend, won’t you?’
Jacques shook his head and left Vorlauf without vouchsafing
any explanation.
As he went down the stairs he was pondering on his German
friend’s remark about his mania for ‘clean-cut ideas,’ the
‘typically French’ assumption that only what is clear is true.
‘No,’ an inward voice protested, ‘that’s not my case. For me
ideas, whether they’re clear or muddled, are never more —
worse luck! — than half-truths, stepping-stones at best. And
that, precisely, is my weakness.’
25
Tuesday^ July 28
COL. stolbach’s misadventure
I T was striking six when Jacques entered the Aschinger Cafe
in the Potsdamer Platz, one of the largest establishments
owned by the Aschinger catering firm, which had branches
in every part of Berlin.
He saw Trauttenbach sitting at a small table by himself, with
441
SUMMER, 1914
a plate of vegetable soup before him. The German seemed
absorbed in the perusal of a newspaper he had propped
against the carafe, but his keen eyes were watching the entrance.
He manifested no surprise and the two young men shook
hands as casually as if they had last met only the day before.
Jacques took a seat facing Trauttenbach and ordered a plate
of soup.
Trauttenbach was a blond, athletic-looking Jew. He had
curly, close-cropped, reddish hair and a forehead massive as
a young ram’s; his cheeks were white and freckled, and the
thick, coarse lips had hardly more colour than the cheeks.
‘I was afraid they’d send me someone else,’ he whispered in
German. T don’t trust the Swiss for this sort of job. You’re only
just in time. To-morrow would have been too late.’ He smiled
with studied nonchalance, twiddling the mustard-pot now and
again as if conversing on some trivial topic. ‘It’s a tricky
little business — for us anyhow,’ he added cryptically. ‘You
personally have nothing to do.’
‘Nothing to do?’ Jacques sounded disappointed.
‘Nothing except what I tell you to do.’
In the same low tone, with the same look of smiling uncon-
cern, interspersing his remarks with little amicable laughs to
put anyone who might be watching them off the scent,
Trauttenbach outlined his plan.
Following a natural bent, he had specialized as the directive
‘hidden hand’ of a sort of secret service functioning in the
interests of the international revolutionary cause. Some days
previously he had obtained information that an Austrian
officer. Colonel Stolbach, was coming to Berlin. It was believed
that Stolbach had been sent on a secret mission, to confer
with the German War Office, and there was every reason to
suppose that, in the present circumstances, the object of his
visit was to draw up with the German General Staff a scheme
of co-operation with their Austrian opposite numbers. Trautten-
bach had conceived the daring plan of purloining the documents
in the Colonel’s possession and to this end had recruited
two colleagues, ‘professionals in this line of business,’ as he
described them with a wink, fellows on whose loyalty he’d
442
TUESDAY, JULY 28
‘stake his last pfennig.’ This piece of information came as no
surprise to Jacques. He knew that Trauttenbach had spent
many years in the Berlin underworld, and had kept up con-
tacts with members of the criminal class; contacts which he
had already turned to account in the service of the Cause.
Early that evening Stolbach was due to have his last inter-
view with the War Minister. He had informed the management
of the hotel where he was staying that he was catching the
night train to Vienna. Thus there was no time to be lost; the
documents would have to be stolen between the time when
Stolbach left the ministry and his departure for the railway
station.
Jacques was not asked to take part in the crime itself — and he
could but own to himself that he preferred it should be so. All
he had to do was to take delivery of the papers, rush them out
of Germany and hand them over as soon as possible to Mey-
nestrel with whom during the last few years Trauttenbach
had been keeping in close touch. If the papers proved to be
important the Pilot would impart their contents to the Socialist
leaders who were due to meet at Brussels on the following day.
Jacques was told to go to the Friedrichstrasse Station and
after buying a ticket for Brussels to enter the third-class waiting-
room; there he was to lie down on one of the wall-seats and
pretend to be sound asleep. The documents, wrapped in a
newspaper, would be surreptitiously placed near his head by a
man who would leave at once without having spoken a word.
These final instructions were repeated to him twice.
‘Let’s have another glass of beer,’ Trauttenbach suggested,
‘before we part for the night’s work.’
Jacques had listened to him in silence, with a vague feeling of
discomfort. This business of stealing documents, however useful
it might be, went against the grain. When he had undertaken
the mission to Berlin he had not expected to be mixed up in
an enterprise of that sort. His first reaction had been a sense
of relief at being asked to play only a very minor part in it. But
at the same time he felt cheated, and rather vexed to find his
role reduced to that of a receiver of stolen goods, a mere pawn
in the game.
443
SUMMER, 1914
Before leaving Trauttenbach he put him the same question
as he had put to Vorlauf: did he think the German and
Austrian governments were acting in collusion?
‘I can’t say if there was any definite understanding between
Berchtold and Bethmann. But it’s quite on the cards the
Austrian General Staff and ours had fixed it up between them.
Indeed I shouldn’t be much surprised if our Chancellor’s been
hoodwinked simultaneously by the Austrian ambassador and
our own General Staff’
‘Ah,’ Jacques exclaimed, ‘if only one could get some con-
crete evidence that the German military clique has been
working hand in glove with the Austrian Staff! If only one
could definitely affirm that what’s leading Germany at the
present moment to turn down the English proposals for a
peaceful settlement is an intrigue between your generals and
their accomplices in Vienna!’ Unconsciously, to justify his
taking part in the theft that Trauttenbach had planned, he
was trying to convince himself that the documents in question
would do yeoman service to the socialist cause.
‘I quite agree,’ the German answered, ‘that evidence of that
kind might have incalculable effects. Even the most patriotic
of our socialist leaders would no longer feel any qualms about
standing up against the government. That’s why it’s so im-
portant to have a squint at that Austrian colonel’s papers.
Don’t get up,’ he added, rising from his seat. ‘I’ll leave first.
Remember: ten-thirty at the station. And till then, you’d
best lie low, and steer clear of crowds. The town is stiff with
police to-day.’
The German Minister for War had not been deterred by
reports of the mass demonstrations taking place in Berlin
from continuing to its end the final and decisive conversation
he had embarked on with the official envoy of the Austrian
General Staff, Colonel Graf Stolbach von Blumenfeld.
The interview terminated at nine-fifteen in an atmosphere of
extreme cordiality. His Excellency even deigned to escort his
visitor to the head of the huge ceremonial staircase of the War
444
TUESDAY, JULY 28
Office. There, under the eyes of the guards on duty and an
A.D.C., the Minister took leave of the Colonel, who courteously
bowed as he shook hands. Both men were in mufti, both looked
tired and worried ; and the parting glance they exchanged
was rife with unsaid implications. Then, tucking his fat brown
attache-case under his arm, preceded by the aide-de-camp,
the Colonel began walking down the wide, red-carpeted steps.
At the foot of the staircase he turned and looked up; his
Excellency had carried amiability so far as to remain standing
at the top of the staircase, so as to wave him a friendly adieu.
In the courtyard a War Office car was waiting. While Stol-
bach, lighting a cigar, settled into his place at the back of the
car, the aide-de-camp bent forward to the chauffeur and told
him the route to take so as to keep clear of demonstrations and
avoid unpleasant incidents on the way back to the Colonel’s
hotel, on the Kurfurstendamm.
The night was sultry. There had been a short, sharp down-
pour which, instead of cooling the air, had made it close and
muggy. In view of possible rioting the lights in all the shops
were out, and though it was not yet ten, Berlin already wore
that aspect of portentous gloom which as a rule came only
with the last hours of the night. Deep in thought, the Colonel
gazed bemusedly at the wide vistas of the German capital.
He was pleased with his day’s work, the practical results
achieved during his stay in Berlin, the report he would submit
next day at Vienna to General von Hotzendorf. On entering
the car he had carelessly dropped the attache-case on the
seat beside him; now he picked it up and placed it on his
knees. It was a handsome affair, brand-new, in fawn-coloured
leather with plated locks. Though of a common pattern, it had
a dignified appearance befitting it to cross the august thres-
holds of high officialdom. The Colonel had bought it at a
fancy goods shop in the Kurfurstendamm on the day of his
arrival at Berlin.
When the car stopped at the hotel, a porter dashed forward
obsequiously and escorted the Colonel to the entrance-hall.
Stolbach paused at the reception office to tell the clerk to
have a light meal sent up to his room, and his bill made out,
445
SUMMER, 1914
as he was catching the night express. Then with quick strides
despite his corpulence, he went to the lift and was taken up to
the first floor.
The brilliantly lighted corridor was empty but for one of the
hotel staff sitting outside the servants’ pantry. Stolbach had not
seen this man before; he was evidently replacing for the time
being the regular room-valet. The man got up on seeing the
Colonel and, preceding him, opened the door of his room,
turned on the light and lowered the Venetian blind. It was a
high-ceiled room, papered in black and gold, with two tall
windows. Opening into it was a blue-tiled bathroom.
Ts there anything you require, sir?’
‘No, thanks. My luggage is ready. But I’d like to have a bath.’
‘You’re leaving to-night, sir?’
‘Yes.’
The valet had thrown a casual glance at the attache-case
which the Colonel, on entering, had placed on a chair near the
door. Then, while Stolbach, after tossing his hat on to the bed,
was dabbing with his handkerchief the sweat that glistened
on the back of his thick, glabrous neck, he went into the bath-
room and turned on the taps. When the man came back into the
bedroom, he found the special envoy of the Austrian Chief of
Staff stripped to the waist, in socks and mauve silk drawers.
Picking up the dusty shoes lying on the carpet he said, ‘I’ll
bring them back in a minute, sir,’ and left the room.
There was only a thin partition between the bathroom and
the servants’ pantry; pressing his ear to the wall, the valet
listened to every sound, polishing meanwhile the shoes he had
brought with him. He smiled on hearing the Colonel’s heavy
bulk settling tumultuously into the water. Then he extracted
from his cupboard a handsome new attache-case in fawn-
coloured leather with plated locks, tightly packed with waste
paper. Wrapping it in a newspaper, he put it under his arm
and, carrying the shoes, knocked at the bedroom door.
‘Come in !’
The servant saw at once that his plan had miscarried. The
Colonel had left the bathroom door wide open; his pink,
chubby head was well in view, craning over the edge of the bath.
446
TUESDAY, JULY 28
The valet placed the shoes on the carpet and without more
ado left the room, his parcel under his arm.
Stolbach let himself slip down into the bath and, with the
water up to his chin, was floundering luxuriously in its gentle
warmth, when suddenly the lights failed; bathroom and bed-
room were plunged simultaneously in darkness. Stolbach
waited for some minutes; then, as the lights showed no sign
of coming on, felt with his fingers along the wall till he found
the bell-push and pressed on it furiously.
He heard the valet’s voice in the bedroom.
‘Did you ring, sir?’
‘What the devil’s up? Have all the lights given out in the
hotel?’
‘No, sir. The light’s on in the pantry. I expect the fuse in
your room has blown. I’ll fix it up for you, sir. Just a moment.’
After a while the Colonel asked :
‘Well, have you fixed it?’
‘Not yet, sir. I ain’t found the fuse-box. It should be j’ust
beside the door.’
The Colonel sat up in his bath and peered into the darkness ;
he could hear the man fumbling about in the adjoining room.
A voice came from it.
‘Very' sorry, sir; I don’t seem able to find that fuse. It must
be in the corridor. I’ll step outside and have a look.’
The man hurried out of the room, rushed to the pantry,
stowed away the Colonel’s attache-case, ran back and replaced
the fuse.
Three quarters of an hour later, after Colonel Graf Stolbach
von Blumenfeld had duly sponged, perfumed and clad his
portly form, had partaken of a light meal of ham and fruit,
washed down with tea, and had lit his cigar, he consulted his
watch. There was time and to spare but, as he disliked being
hurried, he rang up the hotel office and asked to have his
luggage taken down at once.
‘No, I’ll carry that myself,’ he said when the porter picked
up the attache-case lying on the chair beside the door.
Taking it from the man, he made sure that the locks were
secure, then wedging it firmly under his arm, he left the room,
447
SUMMER, 1914
after a final glance round to make sure nothing had been
forgotten; for the Colonel was, first and foremost, a stickler
for method.
Before taking the lift he tried to find the room valet, with a
view to giving him a tip, and even peeped into the servants’
pantry. It was empty.
‘Well, if the man’s such a fool, so much the worse for him,’
the Colonel muttered.
A quarter of an hour later he stepped into the Vienna
express.
At almost the same moment the Genevan student, Jean
Sebastien Eberle, was stepping into the Brussels express at the
Friedrichstrasse station. He had no luggage, only a parcel
that looked as if it might contain a good-sized book. Trautten-
bach had found time to force the lock, wrap the documents
in a newspaper and tie the packet up with string; he had
thrown away the brown attache-case, as a 'needlessly com-
promising object.
Jacques was thinking : If I get caught with these papers in
German territory, there’ll be the devil to pay !
But that the fancied perils of his ‘mission’ should have
declined upon a risk so trivial struck him as almost comical
and he was furious with himself for having let Jenny be alarmed
over so paltry an adventure.
Nevertheless in the course of the journey he retired to the
lavatory, opened the parcel and stowed away the documents
about his person, in his pockets and the lining of his coat, to
avoid awkward questions from the Customs Officers. To make
assurance doubly sure, he bought a box of cigars at one of the
last German stations before the frontier, so as to have some-
thing to declare.
These precautions notwithstanding, he had some anxious
moments when passing the Customs. But it was not till he
felt the train gathering speed on Belgian rails that he took
stock of his condition, and he found he was dripping with sweat.
He settled back in his corner, crossing his arms over his tightly
buttoned coat, and indulged in the luxury of a few hours’ sleep.
448
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
26
Wednesday, July 2g
JACQUES REJOINS HIS FRIENDS FROM ‘HEADQUARTERS*
AT BRUSSELS
The Maison du Peuple at Brussels where, since an early hour
the extraordinary meeting of the International Socialist
Committee had been in progress, was buzzing like a hornets’
nest in every one of its six stories. An heroic, concerted effort
was being put forth to scotch the baneful activities of the
imperialist powers, and to this end there had gathered in the
Belgian capital not only socialist leaders from every part of
Europe but a large contingent of the militant rank and file.
All were determined that the monster indignation meeting
fixed for that Wednesday evening should attract worldwide
attention.
Thanks to the money Meynestrel had placed at the disposal
of his group — no one had ever found out how he and Richardley
contrived always to replenish the secret service fund maintained
at Headquarters — ten of its members had been enabled to
come to Brussels. They had fixed on a brasserie known as the
Tavcrne du Lion, j'ust off the Anspacher Boulevard, as their
meeting-place. Here it was that Jacques had rejoined his
friends and handed over to Meynestrel the Stolbach documents.
The Pilot had at once dashed off to his hotel for a preliminary
inspection of the booty, in the seclusion of his room. Jacques
was to join him there a little later.
Jacques’ appearance was greeted with exclamations of
delight. Quilleuf was the first to catch sight of him.
‘Look, boys !’ he roared. ‘There’s young Thibault come back,
bless his heart ! . . . And how’s yourself, lad? Hot as hell, ain’t it?’
All Jacques’ friends from Headquarters were gathered there:
Alfreda, Richardley, Paterson, Mithoerg, Vanheede, Perinet,
Saffrio the chemist, Sergei Pavlovitch Zelavsky, fat old
449 a
SUMMER, 1914
Boissonis, Skada ‘the Pundit,’ and even Emilie Cartier, her
may-blossom complexion half-hidden under a Red Cross
veil that, all the way from Geneva, Quilleuf had been trying
to make her remove, protesting that the weather was ‘too
darned hot for such contraptions.’
Jacques smiled with pleasure at the sight of all the friendly
hands outstretched towards him. He was delighted, and
moved far beyond his expectation, at suddenly finding himself
back in the congenial fervour of their gatherings at Geneva.
‘Eh boy,’ Quilleuf grinned — under the impression Jacques
had just arrived from France, ‘I see they’ve acquitted that
Caillaux dame o’ yours in Paris . . . What’ll you have? Beer,
did you say? You’re as bad ^s the rest of ’em!’ For Quilleuf
had a profound disdain for the ‘dishwater’ that passed for
beer in Flanders, and remained faithful to his southern tipple.
Vermouth neat.
Quilleuf’s noisy cheerfulness was symptomatic of the almost
universal optimism that was still prevailing at Geneva. Con-
versations at the Talking Shop (where of late Meynestrel had
seldom put in an appearance) had rarely come down from the
clouds of international idealism, and the news that had poured
in of the anti-war demonstrations in the cities of Europe had
been hailed with an enthusiasm that less encouraging reports
had failed to damp. And now that the Swiss group had come to
Brussels and made its first contacts with the delegations from
other parts of Europe, the impressive spectacle of this vast
coalition against war gave most of them the feeling that the
brotherhood of nations was an active reality and victory
assured. True, they read in the morning papers that Austria
had declared war on Servia, and the bombardment of Belgrade
had actually begun in the course of the night; nevertheless
they had been convinced easily enough by the statements in
an Austrian communique, that a few shells had been dropped
on the citadel alone, and the bombardment had no real weight
behind it : it was to be regarded not so much as a prelude to
hostilities as an emphatic warning, a symbolic gesture.
Perinet had Jacques sit down beside him. He had spent the
morning at the ‘Atlantic’ cafe, the headquarters of the French
450
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
delegation, and was full of the latest news from Paris. On the
previous day a delegation of socialist members of parliament,
headed by Jaures and Guesde, had had a long interview with
the acting Foreign Minister. After the interview the socialist
members had drawn up a manifesto emphatically declaring
it was for France alone to decide what line she should adopt;
in no case should the country ‘be plunged into an appalling
war in virtue of a more or less arbitrary interpretation of certain
secret treaties.’ They also insisted that, the official holidays
notwithstanding, the House should be convoked forthwith.
This showed that the French socialists were intending to
take vigorous action in the parliamentary field. Perinet had
been favourably impressed by the enthusiasm and the calm,
indomitable hopefulness evinced by the delegation.
Jaures, notably, had maintained a tone of staunch confidence.
Various remarks he had let fall of recent days were being
retailed by his admirers. He had been heard to say to Vander-
velde: ‘History will repeat itself; it’ll be like the Agadir affair.
There’ll be some ups and downs, but things are absolutely
bound to straighten out.’ And in proof of the Skipper’s optimism
a picturesque anecdote was going the rounds, of how, having
an hour to spare after lunch, he had ambled off to the Museum
and spent it leisurely gazing at the Van Eycks.
‘I saw him,’ Perinet said to Jacques, ‘and I assure you he
looked anything but discouraged. He passed j'ust beside me,
with his fat wallet hunching up one shoulder, his straw hat,
and black tail-coat— looking as usual like an old professor on
his way to college. He was arm in arm with a chap I hadn’t
seen before. Afterwards I learnt it was Haase, the German.
But that’s not all. Just as they came past my table the German
stopped and I heard him say in French — he had an accent
you could cut with a knife : “The Kaiser, he do not vant a var,
not he! Much too frightened is he of ze consequences.” Jaures
turned to him with a smile, his eyes were sparkling. “Well,”
says he, “just you see the Kaiser takes a firm line with the
Austrians. And at our end, we’ll see to it our people take a
firm line with Russia.” Just in front of my table, they were. I
could hear every word as plain as you hear me now.’
451
SUMMER, 1914
‘A firm line with Russia!’ Richardley muttered. ‘It’s a bit
late in the day for that !’
Jacques met his gaze and had an impression that Richardley,
who in this respect was probably reflecting Meynestrel’s
opinions, was far from sharing in the general optimism. His
impression was confirmed a moment later when, bending
towards him, Richardley added under his breath:
‘One almost wonders if France, if those who rule France, I
mean, in tolerating Russia’s mobilization, in tolerating Russia’s
conduct — her riposte to Austria’s challenge by a counter-
challenge, and to the German ultimatum by a plea-in-bar —
haven’t tacitly connived at a war.’
‘The Russian mobilization’s only partial’ Jacques protested,
but his tone lacked conviction.
‘A partial mobilization? Much the same as a general mobi-
lization, I should say, masquerading, for the moment, under
another name.’
Mithoerg, who was sitting near Richardley and Charcovsky,
suddenly roared out :
‘Russia ! She’s mobilizing, make no mistakes about it I She’s
in the hands of Czarist militansmus. All the European govern-
ments to-day, they are in the grip of the reactionary gang,
and, what’s more, they’re under the thumbs of a regime, a
system, which of its very natural makes for war. And that’s
the long and short of it, Kamerad. The liberation of the Slavs?
Just — how do you call it? — eyewashing. Czarism’s never done
nothing but oppress the Slavs. In Poland it has squashed them.
In Bulgaria, it pretends to make them free so as to keep them
under all the surer. Yes, indeed, it’s the old fight itching to
outbreak again — between Russian militarismus and Austrian
militarismus.’
At a neighbouring table Boissonis, Quilleuf, Paterson, and
Saffrio had launched into an interminable discussion as to
the German Government’s projects, which grew, it seemed to
them, more puzzling with each new move. Why should the
Kaiser, while loudly proclaiming his desire for peace, persist-
ently refuse to act as mediator — when a strong hint from
him would have been enough to bring Francis Joseph to
452
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
reason, and acquiescence in the signal diplomatic triumph
he had already won? Germany stood to gain nothing by an
Austrian incursion into Servia. And if, as the social democrats
alleged, the Germans did not want a war, why should they
wantonly expose themselves, and Europe, to the risk of one?
Paterson suggested that the attitude of England was equally
hard to fathom.
‘The eyes of Europe,’ Boissonis remarked oracularly, ‘will
soon be fixed on England. Now that the Austrian declaration
of war has cut direct communications between Vienna and
St. Petersburg, further negotiations can proceed only by way
of London. Thus England’s role of mediator acquires a new
importance.’
On his arrival at Brussels, Paterson had hastened to get in
touch with the delegation of British socialists, who, as he now
told his friends, were greatly perturbed by a rumour that had
been going round the Foreign Office. It was said that certain
influential persons, who had Sir Edward Grey’s ear, were
alarmed at the idea that a declaration of British neutrality
might indirectly favour the bellicose intentions of the Central
Powers, and were therefore urging Sir Edward to make a
stand — or, at least, to warn Germany that if, in the event of
an Austro-Russian war, British neutrality could be positively
counted on, no such presumption should be made as regards a
Franco-German war. The British socialists feared Sir Edward
would yield to the pressure being brought on him — all the
more so as a declaration on such lines would not now come up
against the same opposition in the country as it would certainly
have met during the previous week. For English public opinion
had been profoundly shocked by the extreme harshness of the
Austrian ultimatum, and Austria’s manifest determination
to force a war on Servia.
Tired after his journey, Jacques listened to their conversation
with a languid ear. The pleasure he had felt at seeing his friends
again was evaporating more quickly than he would have
wished.
He crossed over to the table where little Vanheede, Zelavsky,
and Skada weise conversing in undertones.
453
SUMMER, 1914
‘To-day,’ the albino was lamenting in his piping voice, ‘we
live side by side, each for himself, without a spark of charity.
That’s what we’ve got to change. And we must begin with
men’s hearts. Fraternity isn’t something one can impose from
outside, with laws and so on.’ A brief smile lit up his face, as if
he were contemplating some secret vision. ‘If you leave that
out, well, you may be able to build up a socialist regime, perhaps.
But that won’t be socialism — not even the dawn of socialism.’
He had not noticed that Jacques had joined them. Suddenly
he observed him, blushed and stopped talking.
Skada, whose pockets were always stuffed with miscellaneous
literature, had propped against his beer-mug some dilapidated
books. Jacques glanced idly at the titles: Bakunin’s Works,
vol. IV ; Elisee Reclus, VAnarchie et VEglise.
Skada turned to Zelavsky. Behind the enormously thick lenses
of his glasses Skada’s goggle eyes looked big as two poached eggs.
‘Me, I haf no impazience,’ he explained blandly, while with
maniacal regularity his finger-nails raked his close-cropped,
fuzzy hair. ‘I do not vant ze Revolution for mine own sake.
In twenty, dirty, fifty years maybe shall come ze Revolution.
Dat I know, and dat is all I need to keep me living, doing tings.’
Richardley had begun speaking again at the far end of the
room. Jacques pricked up his ears; from the young man’s
vaticinations he might gleam an inkling of the Pilot’s outlook
on the crisis.
‘A war would compel the nations involved to ease the burden
of debt by devaluing their currencies. And that would pitchfork
them into bankruptcy. By the same token it would spell the
ruin of the small investor, and cause worldwide distress. There’d
be a whole host of victims of the capitalist system, up in arms
against it, and they’d join in with us. And that would mean the
end. . . . !’
Mithoerg broke in before he could finish; Boissonis, Quilleuf
and Perinet all started speaking at the same time.
Jacques ceased listening. ‘Is it I who’ve changed?’ he won-
dered. ‘Or is it they?’ He was conscious of a vague unease
which in vain he tried to diagnose. ‘This threat of war has
taken our group by surprise, set us at cross-purposes. Each of
454
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
US has reacted in his own way, according to his temperament.
We all have a desire for action, a passionate desire, but not
one of us can gratify it. We’ve always been a group apart,
outside the pale of action, undisciplined, unofficered. Who is
to blame for that? Meynestrel, perhaps.’ He looked up at the
clock. ‘I’d better be getting back to him.’
He went up to Alfreda who was sitting beside Paterson.
‘What tram will take me to your hotel?’
Paterson stood up. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘Freda and I will
go a bit of the way with you.’
He was due to meet an English socialist, a friend of Keir
Hardie. Linking his arm with Jacques’, he drew him towards
the exit. Alfreda followed. Paterson was in an excited mood.
The man he was to meet, a journalist, had suggested he should
go to Ireland, on an assignment for a socialist paper. If the
plan came off, he, Paterson, would have to leave for England
next day, the first, thing in the morning. He had not crossed
the Channel once in the last five years, and the prospect of
this trip had, as he put it, ‘fairly bowled him over.’
Outside, the sun blazed pitilessly down ; the pavements
were scorching underfoot. Unstirred by any breath of wind,
the heat lay like a pall of fire upon the city. Coatless, puffing
at his pipe, his tennis-shirt open at the neck, in his old grey
flannel trousers, Paterson looked more than ever like an Oxford
undergraduate on a walking tour.
Alfreda accompanied them. The dress she was wearing had
paled, as a result of frequent washings, to a delicate cornflower
blue. With her black fringe, tip-turned little nose, large doll-
like eyes, and air of being on her best behaviour, she looked
like a little schoolgirl out for the day. As was her habit, she had
listened without putting in a word. Now, however, she asked
with a slight tremor in her voice :
‘Supposing you go to Ireland, Pat, when will you come back
to Geneva?’
The young man’s face darkened.
‘Haven’t a notion!’ he answered glumly.
She hesitated for a moment, then gazed up at him, only to
drop her eyelids almost at once with a quick movement that
455
SUMMER, 1914
made the shadows of the long lashes flicker on her pale
cheeks.
‘Will you come back?’ she whispered.
‘Yes.’ His tone was confident, emphatic. Dropping Jacques’
arm, he moved beside Alfreda and laid his big paw on her
shoulder with clumsy affection. ‘Yes, Freda. You can stake
your life on that.’
They walked some steps in silence.
Paterson took his pipe from his mouth and, cocking his head
on one side, fell to examining Jacques’ face as if it were some
curious object that had just caught his notice.
‘I’m thinking about your portrait, Thibault. With another
two sittings, quite short ones, I could have got the damned
thing finished. Rotten bad luck ! Looks as if there was a hoodoo
on that portrait, doesn’t it, old boy?’
He gave a hearty, boyish laugh. As they were crossing a
square, Paterson pointed to a small, hutch.-like house at the
corner of an alley.
‘Observe that mansion. It has the honour of sheltering
William Stanley Paterson, Esquire. I’ve quite a big bedroom
and if you like, old boy, you can share it with me — for an ounce
of tobacco per diem.’’
Jacques had not yet settled where to stay.
‘Right you are,’ he smiled.
‘It’s on the first floor, that room with the Open window. Got
it?’
Alfreda had stopped walking and was staring up at Paterson’s
window.
The Englishman turned to Jacques. ‘Here we part company.
See the station? The Pilot’s place is in the street immediately
behind it.’
‘You’ll come along with me?’ Jacques asked Alfreda, sup-
posing she would accompany him to the Pilot’s rooms.
She gave a little start, then gazed at him, and in the dark,
dilated pupils Jacques seemed to glimpse a tragic indecision.
There was brief silence. Then Paterson spoke in a casual tone.
‘No, you’ll have to go there by yourself. So long, old chap.’
456
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
27
Wednesday^ July 2g
MEYNESTREL STUDIES THE STOLBACH ‘DOSSIER’
For the last fortnight, Meynestrel had been denouncing war
as passionately as any member of the group at Headquarters.
But nothing had shaken his conviction that no action on the
part of International Socialism would avail to prevent war
from breaking out. ‘War’s an essential,’ he would say to
Alfreda, ‘for the development of really revolutionary con-
ditions. Of course one can’t be sure if revolution will come as a
result of this particular clash, or of a subsequent war, or of
some other type of crisis. That depends on a heap of things.
For instance, on who has the “first-fruits.” Who’ll bring oflf
the first victories — the Central Powers or the Franco-Russians?
There’s no telling. For us, however, that’s immaterial. It’s up
to us, just now, to act as if we were certain of being able, at
an early date, to convert this imperialist war into a proletarian
revolution. To intensify the present pre-revolutionary con-
ditions by every possible means. In other words, to co-ordinate
all the well-meaning pacifist activities, in whatever quarter
we may find them, and foster unrest in every possible way.
To stir up trouble wherever we can and handicap the various
Governments to the utmost.’ Inwardly he thought: Always
provided we don’t go too far. We must take care to refrain from
any too efficient move, which might definitely stave off war.
On arriving at Brussels he had deliberately chosen lodgings
at some distance from the ‘Taverne’ and was staying behind
the Gare du Midi, in a small house at the end of a courtyard.
After putting in a couple of hours alone in his bedroom
studying the Stolbach papers, he no longer felt the slightest
doubt as to the collusion between the General Staffs of Germany
and Austria; these documents proved it to the hilt. The infor-
mation procured by Jacques consisted almost exclusively of
457 0 ,*
SUMMER, 1914
memoranda jotted down by Colonel Stolbach in the course of
his talks with the German High Command and War Minister.
These notes had evidently served for drafting the messages
Stolbach sent to Vienna after each such interview. Not only
did they throw a lurid light on the present state of the pour-
parlers between the respective General Staffs, but they con-
tained many references to the immediate past which gave a
clear idea of the negotiations that had been taking place
between Vienna and Berlin during the last few weeks. These
retrospective revelations were of the highest interest. For
Meynestrel they were a confirmation of the suspicions the
Viennese socialist, Hosmer, had instructed Boehm and Jacques
to impart to him at Geneva on July 12, and they enabled him
to reconstruct the whole sequence of events.
Only a few days after the Sarajevo outrage, Berchtold and
Hotzendorf had set about trying to persuade the old Emperor
to take advantage of the incident, to order immediate mobiliza-
tion, and to crush Servia by force of arms. But Francis Joseph
had proved unmanageable. He raised the objection that
military action on the part of Austria would meet with the
Kaiser’s veto. (‘Oh ho!’ Meynestrel murmured at this point.
‘That proves, incidentally, that he was already alive to the
danger of Russian intervention and a world-war.’) In order to
overcome the Emperor’s reluctance, Berchtold had thereupon
conceived the bold idea of sending his own chief private sec-
retary, Alexander Floyos, to Berlin, with instructions to canvass
Germany’s approval. As might have been expected, neither the
Kaiser nor the German Chancellor would hear of any such
adventure; they were much too apprehensive of Russian
reactions, and were not disposed to let themselves be drawn
into a European war by Austria. But now the Prussian military
party took a hand in the game. Hoyos found in them well-
prepared and highly influential allies. Since February, 1913,
the German General Staff were fully aware of the Slav peril
as well as of the plots that were being hatched by Servia and
Russia against Austria, and by the same token against Germany.
They even suspected St. Petersburg of having, with the con-
nivance of Belgrade, played a more or less occult part in the
458
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
Sarajevo murder. But the German generals held it for an
axiom that Russia could not possibly face the risks of an
immediate war, and would not let herself be involved in any
form of hostilities for at least two years to come — that is, until
she had completed her armaments. Urged on by Hoyos, the
German Army Chiefs had managed to satisfy Wilhelm III and
Bethmann-Hollweg that, as things were, the danger of Russia’s
taking a firm line and bringing on a general conflict was
negligible, and that here was a heaven-sent opportunity for
increasing German prestige in the eyes of the world. The
upshot was that Hoyos succeeded in obtaining a free hand for
Austria and took back with him to Vienna the promise that
Germany would unflinchingly back her ally in all her claims.
Here at last was an explanation of Austria’s incomprehensible
tactics during the last few weeks. It proved, moreover, that
even then the Kaiser and his immediate associates more or
less dimly perceived if not the likelihood, at least the possibility
of a general war.
‘A lucky thing I’m the only one to have set eyes on this!’
Meynestrel chuckled. ‘And to think I as near as possible asked
Jacques and Richardley along to lend a hand 1’
He was bending above the bed on which, for lack of space
elsewhere, he had been sorting out the papers into little heaps.
Taking up the memoranda he had placed on his right, all of
which referred more or less to the past, to the events of early
July, he put them in an envelope and sealed it, marking it
No. I.
Then he pulled up a chair and sat down.
‘Now let’s have another squint at the rest of it.’ He reached
towards the papers he had gathered on his left. ‘All this has to
do with friend Stolbach’s mission. This lot is the Austrian plan
of campaign — strategy, technical details. Not my pidgin I We’ll
put it in envelope No. 2. Good. It’s the rest that’s so . . . en-
lightening. These memoranda are dated, so it’s easy to follow
up the progress of the “conversations.” What exactly was the
object of the mission? Roughly speaking, to speed up German
mobilization. Here are the earliest papers. On arrival at
Berlin, a talk with von Moltke. And so forth. The colonel
459
SUMMER, 1914
urges the German Staff to push on their military preparations.
“Impossible !” he’s told; “the Chancellor won’t have it, and he’s
backed up by the Kaiser.” Well, well ! Why this opposition on
Bethmann’s part? “Too early,” he declares. Just let’s have a
look at the reasons he gives. In the first place, reasons of home
policy: he fulminates against the popular demonstrations, the
attacks in Vorwdrts and so forth. That’s just too bad ! Yes, he’s
terribly put out by the violent opposition of the social demo-
crats. Secondly, reasons of foreign policy: for one thing, the
need to enlist the approval of neutrals, chiefly of the English.
Then he insists on the advisibility of waiting for the Russian
menace to become more definite; only when the Imperial
Government’s confronted with “a patently aggressive Russia,”
will they be able to satisfy both the German socialists and the
world at large that for Germany it is a case of self-defence,
that she is driven to mobilize as a measure of common prudence.
Good for Bethmann! There’s no getting behind that! Well
then, how will Stolbach and the German Generals set about
forcing comrade Bethmann’s hand? These documents show
quite clearly how their little scheme took form. The aim, of
course, is to jockey Russia into adopting some line of action
which might be construed as “definitely provocative.” “Why not
oblige her to mobilize?” Stolbach suggests on the evening of the
25th. The wily old bird ! The answer to which is : “Exactly so !
And there’s only one sure way of doing it — to mobilize in
Austria — and that’s easily fixed up.” They’re not such fools as
one might think, these generals. They quite realize that, were
Francis Joseph to decree the mobilization of his entire army
(which, Stolbach here points out, “would no longer be merely
a threat to little Servia, but an obvious challenge to Imperial
Russia”), the Czar would inevitably be led to riposte with a
general mobilization of his own army. And being confronted
with a general mobilization on the part of Russia, the Kaiser
would no longer withhold his own decree for mobilization.
And the Chancellor would have no further say in the matter,
for a German mobilization directly due to a threat of Russian
invasion could be justified in the eyes of everybody, both abroad
and at home. It would satisfy not only German opinion,
460
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
already worked up to fever pitch against the Russians, but
European opinion as well. Even the social democrats would
approve. . . .Yes,’ Meynestrel observed to himself, ‘that’s
perfectly true. Sudekum and Company have been dinning the
Russian peril into our ears for ever so long, at every Congress.
Bebel himself is as bad as the rest of ’em. As far back as 1900
he proclaimed that in the face of a Russian menace he would
shoulder a gun. The socialists, this time, would be hoist with
their own petard. They would have to make good their words.
It would be impossible for them, as social democrats, not to
co-operate with the Government, when it was a question of
preparing to defend the German proletariat against Cossack
imperialism. . . . An excellent scheme, my masters ! So, very
soon, we’ll have general mobilization in Austria. And that’s
why, the very next day but one after his arrival in Berlin,
friend Stolbach sends wire after wire to Hotzendorf, urging
upon Austria the advisability of taking measures for a general
mobilization. Capital ! A Machiavellian trap set for Russia
by the Berlin generals, with the complicity of Austria. And
meanwhile the Kaiser and his Chancellor peacefully puff at
their cigars, without an inkling of what’s going on.’
Meynestrel squeezed his temples between fore-finger and
thumb — a familiar gesture with him — then slid his hand quickly
along his cheeks down to the tip of his pointed beard.
‘Splendid ! They’re heading straight for it. And at a good
pace, what’s more !’
He gathered up the papers spread out on the counterpane
and stuffed them into a third envelope, muttering again : ‘What
a stroke of luck that I’m the only one to have set eyes on this !’
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and remained
for a few minutes without moving.
These papers clearly represented a ‘new factor’ of tremen-
dous importance. With but few exceptions, the German
social democrats had no idea of any such intrigue between
Vienna and Berlin. Even the most rabid critics of the Imperial
regime refused to believe the latter would be foolish enough to
imperil world peace and the future of the Empire for the sake
of saving Austria’s face. They therefore accepted the official
461
Summer, 1914
statements as reliable. They believed that the Wilhelmstrasse
had really been taken unawares by the Austrian ultimatum, and
had had previous knowledge neither of its precise wording,
nor of its aggressive tone; and that Germany was making a
bom fide attempt to mediate between Austria and her adver-
saries. The better informed among them did, indeed, suspect
a possible understanding between the General Staffs of Vienna
and Berlin. Haase, the German delegate at Brussels, whom
Meynestrel had run across in the morning had told him how
he had approached the Government on the previous Sunday
and reminded them emphatically that the Austro-German
alliance was a strictly defensive one. He had betrayed a certain
uneasiness as regards the answer he had received. ‘That’s as
it may be. But supposing Russia did resort to some unprovoked
act of aggression against our ally, what then?’ So far, however,
Haase was far from suspecting that the Austrian general
mobilization was actually intended to serve as a skilfully baited
trap set by the German military party to lure their enemy,
Russia, into war. This incontrovertible proof provided by the
Stolbach papers, were it to fall into the hands of the social
democrat leaders, would prove a potent weapon in their fight
against war. They would promptly turn upon their own
ministers the furious attacks they had hitherto reserved for the
Vienna Government.
‘It’s a regular charge of dynamite!’ Meynestrel muttered.
‘There’s no knowing what its effects might be, if it fell into
competent hands. Why, anything might happen — it might
even blow the prospects of a war sky-high !’
For a few seconds, he pictured to himself the Kaiser and
his Chancellor trembling at the thought of this revelation of the
Austro-German intrigue, of seeing themselves exposed to a
virulent Press campaign which well might turn against the
German Government not only the German people but world
opinion as well, and being faced with the alternative of either
putting every socialist leader under arrest and thus declaring war
upon the whole of the German proletariat and the European
Socialist International (which was hardly to be thought of),
or of yielding to socialist pressure, and abruptly setting the
462
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
^ears into reverse — withholding from Austria the co-operation
promised to Hoyos. What would ensue? Probably, for lack of
German support, Austria would not dare to persevere in her
warlike schemes, and would have to be content with diplomatic
‘conversations’ ending in a compromise. And every capitalistic
war plan would thus be brought to nought.
‘That remains to be seen !’
He rose to his feet, took a few steps up and down the room,
drank some water, returned and seated himself once again
before the documents.
‘And now. Pilot, my friend, let’s have no slip in our tactics.
There’s the choice between two alternatives. Either I make
over these papers to a man like Liebknecht, and let scandal
do its damnedest. In that case, one of two things will eventuate :
either the scandal will prevent a war, or it will not. Supposing,
as is quite likely, it fails to do so, what have we to gain by it?
Naturally the proletariat would go to war with the certainty
of having been bamboozled. Excellent propaganda for a civil
war. Yes, but the wind is blowing in the opposite direction —
people everywhere are “war-minded” already. That’s quite
obvious here in Brussels. Indeed, as things arc, it’s problematic
if the leaders of social democracy would unanimously agree
to touch off the dynamite I’d hand them. Most problematic
indeed. Let’s assume however, they decide to print the docu-
ments in Vorwarts. The paper would be seized, the Government
would publish a categorical denial and the mood, in Germany,
is already such that the official denials would carry more weight
than our indictments. On the other hand, let us now suppose,
against all likelihood, that Liebknecht, by making the most
of the resentment of the people and the worldwide indignation
that would ensue, obliges the Kaiser to draw in his horns, and
thus prevents the outbreak of war. Obviously, in that case
the influence of the Socialist International and the will-to-
revolution of the masses would benefit. So far, so good — but
by preventing a war, we’d be throwing away our best
trump-card.’
For a while he stared at the documents before him, weighing
the implications of the decision he had now to take.
463
SUMMER, 1914
‘It’s unthinkable,’ he told himself half aloud. ‘Unthinkable!
Why, even if there were only one chance in a hundred of
preventing war, that risk must not be run !’
Again he pondered deeply.
‘No. From whatever angle one looks at the problem — No!
For the present there’s only one solution — to put our dynamite
into cold storage!’ Stooping, he dragged a small suit-case from
under the bed. ‘Must keep the stuff under lock and key, not
breathe a word about it. Until the appointed hour . . . ’
The ‘appointed hour’ he had in mind was that when ineluc-
tably the morale of the rank and file of the contending armies
began to falter. Then, as a means of speeding up the general
demoralization, and exacerbating it, this conclusive proof of
the machinations of the governments concerned would come
in very handy; its disclosure would enable him to deal a
knock-out blow.
A grim smile flitted across his face, the smile of a man
possessed.
‘How curiously things hang together!’ he mused. ‘To some
extent, perhaps, on these three envelopes I’m holding in my
hand, depend vast issues, war and revolution !’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Is that you, Freda?’
‘No, it’s Thibault.’
‘Ah!’
Quickly he stowed away the envelopes in the suit-case and
locked it before going to open the door.
Instinctively Jacques began by casting a sweeping glance
round the disordered room ; where were the documents ?
‘Hasn’t Freda come with you?’ Meynestrel could not keep an
undertone of petulance that was almost anguish, out of his
voice, though he mastered it at once. ‘I won’t ask you to sit
down,’ he added with a touch of humour, pointing to the two
chairs in the room, both strewn with feminine apparel. ‘I was
just going out anyhow. I’d rather like to see what they’re up
to at the “People’s House.” ’
‘What about those documents?’ Jacques tried to keep the
eagerness out of his voice.
464
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
While speaking, the Pilot had pushed the suit-case under the
bed.
‘I’m afraid Trauttenbach had all his trouble for nothing,’
he said coolly. ‘And so had you.’
‘What!’
Jacques was less mortified than dumbfounded; the idea the
doeuments might prove valueless had never crossed his mind.
Reluctant to ask the Pilot to explain himself, he merely said :
‘What have you done with them?’
Meynestrel pointed a foot in the direction of the suit-case.
‘I thought you intended to show them to Jaures and Vander-
velde at to-night’s committee-meeting.’
A smile crept over Meynestrel’s face, an ice-cold smile that
glimmered in his eyes and hardly stirred his lips, and in the
corpse-like pallor of the face that smiling, keenly lucid gaze
seemed so little human that Jacques shivered, looked away,
‘Show them to Jaures and Vandervelde?’ Meynestrel
repeated in his high falsetto. ‘Why, they wouldn’t even find
the materials for another harangue in them!’ Seeing Jacques’
look of disappointment, he added, dropping his sarcastic tone :
‘Of course I shall study all these memoranda in detail when
I’m back at Geneva. But my first impression is— we’ve drawn
a blank. They deal with questions of strategy, man-power and
the like, nothing that can be of the slightest use to us at present.’
He had put on his coat, picked up his hat.
‘Will you come with me? We’ll walk slowly, if you don’t
mind. This heat is perfectly damnable; I shan’t forget in a
hurry what a summer day in Brussels can be like! . . . What
can have happened to Alfreda? She said she’d call for me. Go
ahead. I’ll follow.’
During his walk he plied Jacques with questions about Paris,
and did not mention the doeuments again.
He was limping more than usual, and apologized for it rather
testily. In the summer, especially when he had been over-tiring
himself, his leg-muscles hurt him as much as in the period
following his flying accident.
‘I must look quite the wounded hero,’ he observed with a
quick laugh. ‘In a month or two that’ll be all the rage.’
465
SUMMER, 1914
At the entrance of the Maison du Peuple, as Jacques was taking
leave of him, Meynestrcl suddenly tapped his arm.
‘Tell me, Jacques, what’s come over you?’
‘Come over me?’
‘You’ve changed a lot.’
His keen, dark, penetrating gaze lingered attentively on
Jacques.
For a moment the picture of Jenny hovered before Jacques’
eyes, and he felt himself blushing. To tell a lie or to explain
things were equally distasteful; smiling evasively, he looked
away.
‘See you later,’ the Pilot said, without further comment.
‘I’ll dine with Freda at the “Taverne” before the meeting.
We’ll keep a seat for you beside us.’
28
Wednesday, July 2g
THE MASS MEETING AT BRUSSELS
B Y eight o’clock not only were the five thousand seats in the
Royal Circus all occupied but there was no standing-room left
and, outside, the narrow streets surrounding the Circus were
already packed with a seething crowd whose numbers were
reckoned by enthusiastic militants as five or six thousand at
the lowest estimate.
Jacques and his friends had much difficulty in pushing
through the crowd and reaching the seats allotted them.
The ‘officials’ had not arrived ; they had been detained at
the Maison du Peuple, where the International Committee was
still in session. Rumour had it that the debate was fast and
furious, and looked like going on well into the night. Keir
466
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
Hardie and Vaillant were making a determined stand to get
the delegates to agree unanimously on the launching of a
general strike as a preventive measure, and to -take active
steps in their respective countries for organizing such a strike.
Only thus, they argued, could Socialism baulk the warlike
projects of the various governments. Jaures had energetically
backed their proposals, regarding which a hot debate had
been in progress since early morning. The clash came always
between two opposing schools of thought. Some were quite
prepared to approve of the promotion of a strike in the country
taking the offensive, but, in the case of a defensive war, since a
country paralysed by a general strike was doomed inevitably
to be invaded by the aggressor nation, they maintained that
the attacked country had the right, indeed the duty, to defend
itself by force of arms. This was the view of most of the Germans,
of many Belgians, too, and Frenchmen, and this group con-
fined itself to looking for a satisfactory definition of the term
‘aggressor nation.’ The other group, taking its stand on history
and citing as modern instances the government-inspired news
items that had been appearing lately in French, German,
and Russian newspapers, would have nothing to do with
theories of so-called wars in self-defence. ‘Once a government,’
they said, ‘makes up its mind to plunge a nation into war,
it will always find some pretext for getting itself attacked, or
seemingly attacked. The one and only way to outwit such
tactics is to announce in advance that the weapon of a “preven-
tive” general strike will be resorted to in any case, that the
response to any threat of war will be automatic. It is essential
that this proposal should be unanimously voted forthwith by
the socialist leaders of all countries, in terms that leave no loop-
hole for evasion. Only thus can our collective action against
war, that one effective form of action which is the entire
stoppage of the nation’s industries, come into operation in the
hour of peril, simultaneously in every country.’
The results of the debate, in which perhaps the immediate
destinies of Europe hung in the balance, were not yet known.
Jacques felt a touch on his elbow. Saffrio had just caught
sight of him and edged his way to his side.
467
SUMMER, 1914
‘I wanted to tell you about the letter Palazzolo’s just
received from Mussolini. It’s a grand letter, bellissima.’ He drew
some sheets from the place where he had preciously bestowed
them, under his shirt. ‘I’ve copied the best bits. And Richard-
ley’s translated it into slap-up French, for the Beacon. Listen
to this !’
The hubbub was so great that Jacques had to bring his ear
near Saffrio’s lips, to hear him.
‘Listen to this ! Here’s a bit to begin with. “War enables the
bourgeoisie to confront the proletariat with terrible alternatives :
either to revolt, or take a hand in the shambles. A revolt is
promptly quelled in blood; and the shambles whitewashed
with such fine sentiments as Duty and Patriotism.” Are you
listening? Benito writes this too. “War between nations is the
bloodiest form of middle-class collaboration. The bourgeoisie
gloats over such immolations of the workers on the altar of the
Fatherland.” And this. “The march of events leads inevitably
to International Socialism.” Yes,’ he cried passionately, ‘Benito
says that world-wide socialism is on the way! Already the
Internazionale’ s strong enough to save the world. You can see
it here to-night: the union of the proletariat means peace
on earth.’
He drew himself up proudly; his eyes sparkling. He went
on talking, but the growing uproar prevented Jacques from
catching what he said. For the immense crowd, half stifled
by the heat, was waxing restive. By way of distraction, the
Belgian militants launched into their fiery hymn, ‘Workers
of the world, unite!’ and soon everyone was joining in, in
unison. Faltering at first, each voice gained a^ it were a ful-
crum on its neighbour’s — till not voices only but men’s hearts
took courage, and the anthem swelled to a thunderous
affirmation of their unity.
When at last the long-awaited delegates showed up at the
entrance, the whole audience rose to a man, with a wild roar
of joyous, friendly, triumphant acclamation. And spontaneously,
unheralded, the ‘Internationale’ broke from every throat,
drowning the vollies of applause. When the chairman, Vander-
velde, raised his hand, the singing ceased — reluctantly, as it
468
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
seemed. All eyes were turned towards the little knot of leaders,
as silence gradually settled on the vast arena. The faces of the
men on the platform had been made familiar to all by the
Party newsheets, and people pointed to them, whispering
names. Every nationality had responded to the summons. In
this solemn hour when Europe’s destinies hung in the balance,
the working class of every nation was represented on that
little platform, upon which a myriad eyes converged, all alike
fired with the same indomitable hope.
That collective, mutually contagious confidence redoubled
when they learned from Vandervelde’s lips that, at the suggestion
of the German socialists, the Committee had decided that
the much-talked-of International Socialist Congress originally
convened for August 23 at Vienna, was to take place in Paris
on the 9th. In the name of the French Party, Jaures and Guesde
promised to make all necessary arrangements, and, appealing
for the hearty co-operation of their hearers, planned to give
this demonstration — to be entitled ‘The Proletariat at War
on War’ — an epoch-making significance.
‘At a time when two great nations are being hounded on to
fight each other,’ said Vandervelde, ‘it will be an eye-opener
for all concerned to sec the representatives of the trade-unions
and working-class associations in one of these countries, with
four million votes behind them, crossing the frontiers of the
so-called “enemy country,” fraternizing with the “enemy” and
declaring their will to peace between the nations.’
Haase, a socialist member of the Reichstag, rose amid
general applause. His courageous speqph left no shadow of
doubt as to the loyal support of the social democrats.
‘The Austrian ultimatum was an act of flagrant provocation.
Austria is out for war. She seems to assume that Germany will
back her. But we German socialists will not tolerate the pro-
letariat being bound by secret treaties. This is the German
proletariat’s slogan : No Intervention, even if Russia joins in
the war.’
Each phrase was greeted with a burst of cheers. The forth-
right tone of the pronouncement came as a relief to all.
‘Let our adversaries beware!’ he said in conclusion. ‘It well
469
SUMMER, 1914
may be that the working class in every land, weary of poverty
and oppression, will at long last wake from slumber and unite
in building a classless world.’
Morgan the Italian, the Englishman Keir Hardie, and the
Russian delegate, Rubanovitch, proceeded to address the
meeting. With one voice proletarian Europe execrated the
wild-cat imperialism of its governments and demanded that
such concessions should be made as were needed for the
maintenance of peace.
When Jaures came forward to deliver his speech there was an
unprecedented storm of applause.
He moved even more ponderously than usual, for he had a
hard day’s work behind him. His head sagged between his
burly shoulders and his hair, matted with sweat, hung in wisps
over his low forehead. When, after slowly climbing the steps,
he took his stand solidly, composedly, facing his audience, he
brought to mind a stocky giant straining forward, bent-backed,
his feet deeply socketed in the soil, to stem the onrush of some
catastrophic landslide.
‘Citizens !’ A clarion call.
By some prodigy of nature, which recurred whenever he
mounted a platform, Jaures’ voice drowned suddenly the
fitful clamour of the crowd and a religious hush ensued: the
stillness of a forest before the storm breaks.
He seemed to ruminate a moment, clenched his fists, then
abruptly crossed his stubby arms upon his chest. (‘Like a seal
starting in to preach,’ as Paterson irreverently put it.) He began
speaking without haste or vehemence, with no apparent effort ;
nevertheless, from his first words, the full-throated clangour of
his voice, like the first peals of a great cathedral bell, set the air
throbbing, and suddenly the vast hall grew resonant as a belfry.
All eagerness not to miss a word, craning forward, his chin
propped on his hand, Jacques gazed at the uplifted face, which
seemed always rapt on some far-off prospect beyond space
and time.
Jaures had nothing new to tell. Once again he exposed the
danger of policies of conquest and prestige, the shortcomings
of diplomacy, the crack-brained patriotism of the chauvinists,
470
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
the futility and horrors of war. His line of thought was obvious
to a degree, his vocabulary rather limited and his rhetorical
effects came often from the stock-in-trade of demagogy. And
yet these magnanimous banalities induced in the serried mass
of listeners, Jacques included, a high-tension current, causing
it to vibrate at the speaker’s will, to thrill like a harp in the
wind with anger or fraternity, hope or indignation. What was
the secret of that spell-binding glamour, what the magic of
the insistent voice that rose and swelled in eddies of sound above
those thousands of upturned faces? Was it his faith, his poetic
vision, the perfect concord of his personality, in which was so
miraculously harmonized a gift for speculative word-spinning
and a keen aptitude for action, an historian’s clarity of judge-
ment and a poet’s fantasy, a taste for order and a zeal for
revolution? That night especially an obstinate conviction that
sank deep into his hearers’ hearts emanated from his words,
his voice, his rock-like immobility — the certitude that victory
was near at hand; that already the refusal of the working
classes to co-operate was holding up the governing cabals, and
it had become impossible for the forces making for war to
vanquish those ensuing peace.
When after a dramatic peroration, his face convulsed, his
lips flecked with foam, his body shaken by a mystic frenzy, he
left the platform, the whole audience rose as one man to
acclaim him. Like thunder reverberating in a mountain gorge,
the din of clapping hands and stamping feet rolled from wall
to wall of the huge arena, while everywhere arms shot up,
frantically waving hats and handkerchiefs, newspapers, walking-
sticks. Jacques pictured a tall cornfield lashed by a storm wind.
In such moments of delirious mass emotion, one word from
Jaures, a mere wave of his hand, would have sufficed to launch
the crowd, in a wild onrush of fanatical enthusiasm, to storm
under his lead a new Bastille.
Little by little a rhythm took form across the pandemonium
of sounds. To shake olf the oppression that gripped their heaving
chests, the crowds once again were finding relief in song.
Arise, ye starvelings from your slumbers !
471
SUMMER, 1914
And outside the building the thousands who had been
unable to enter and, despite the efforts of the police to disperse
them, were massed in all the neighbouring streets, joined in
the chorus of the ‘Internationale.’
Arise, yc starvelings from your slumbers.
Arise, ye criminals of want . . . !
29
Wednesday, July 2g
THE PACIFIST PARADE AT BRUSSELS
The hall was gradually emptying. Jostled, sometimes almost
swept off his feet, Jacques did his best to protect little Vanheede,
who was clinging to him like a drowning man. Jacques kept
his eyes fixed on the group some yards away composed of
Meynestrel, Mithoerg, Richardley, Saffrio, Paterson, and
Alfreda. The problem was, how to get through to them.
Steering Vanheede in front of him, and taking advantage of
every eddy of the crowd in the direction of his friends, he
contrived little by little to cover the few yards intervening.
Once he had joined them he let himself be borne helplessly
along amidst the crowd streaming towards the exit.
With the chorus of the ‘Internationale’ that sometimes
blared out like a trumpet-call and sometimes sank to a low
drone of voices, there mingled strident yells : ‘Down with war !’
‘Socialism for ever!’ ‘IVe want PeaceP
Meynestrel shouted to Alfreda: ‘Keep close to us, little girl,
or you’ll be getting lost.’
But Alfreda did not hear. Clinging to Paterson’s arm, she was
craning her head to see what was happening in front.
‘Just a moment, dear !’ Paterson said.
472
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
Clasping his hands firmly in front of him and stooping
forward, he made a sort of stirrup with his interlocked fingers,
on which Alfreda, after some trouble, managed to get a foothold.
Then ‘Up you go !’ he cried and with a jerk straightened
his back, hoisting her above the crowd. She was laughing. To
keep her balance, she pressed herself against Paterson’s chest.
Wide with excitement, her big, doll-like eyes had that night
a strange, barbaric glitter.
‘I can’t see a thing.’ There was a febrile languor in her
voice. ‘Only a ... a forest of flags.’
She seemed in no hurry to get down. With her skirts flapping
in his eyes, Paterson stumbled ahead.
A moment later all were outside, hardly knowing how they
had got there. The crowd in the street was even thicker than
in the hall, and the din so deafening and incessant that after a
while they all but ceased to hear it. For some minutes the
surging mass swayed this way and that uncertainly; then, as
if some herd-instinct gave the lead, all with one accord began
forging slowly ahead across the darkness, crashing through the
police cordons, drawing into their ranks the onlookers lining
the pavements.
‘Where are they leading us?’ Jacques enquired.
'’Z^sammen marschieren, Kamerad^ was Mithoerg’s reply. His
flabby cheeks were puffed and crimson as if he had just stepped
out of a Turkish bath.
‘I expect we’re going to demonstrate outside the Government
offices,’ Richardley remarked.
''Wir voollen keinen Krieg! Frieden! FriedenP bawled Mithoerg.
Zelavsky’s guttural voice joined in.
‘Doloi voinu. Mir! MirP
‘Where’s Freda got to?’ Meynestrel asked in a low tone.
Jacques looked back over his shoulder. Immediately behind
him was Richardley, holding his head high, the usual rather
braggart smile playing on his lips. Then came little Vanheede
between Mithoerg and Zelavsky; he had linked his arms in
theirs and they seemed to be carrying him, along. He was
neither shouting nor singing; his cheeks were so pale as to
seem translucent; his half-closed eyes were turned towards the
473
SUMMER, 1914
Carried away to the right, he was jammed against a house-
front in a sort of backwater while the main stream swept
Meynestrel’s group resistlessly ahead. From the place where
he was standing, unable to advance or retreat, he had a sudden
glimpse of Paterson only a few yards away. Alfreda was still
with the young Englishman. They did not notice him as they
went by, but he had time to observe their faces — changed
almost out of recognition. The dim light showed up in strong
relief the salient features of the young man’s face, giving it a
curious harshness, and the eyes, usually bright with merriment,
were set in an unblinking stare akin to madness. Alfreda’s
expression was no less changed; all the gentleness had gone
out of it, giving place to a look of vulgar, brazen sensuality.
It was the face of a whore; worse still, a drunken whore. Her
forehead resting on Paterson’s shoulder, she was screaming out
the ‘Internationale’ in a hoarse, staccato voice, as if exulting
in her personal triumph, her deliverance, the victory of her
instincts. What had Meynestrel said? ‘I rather think that
Freda won’t come back to the hotel to-night.’
Fear gripped his heart and, without a notion what he meant
to say to them, Jacques tried to force his way in their direction,
shouting ‘Pat!’ But there was no breaking through the crowd
that hemmed him in ; after a few vain attempts, he gave it up.
For a while he followed them with his eyes ; then, when he had
lost sight of them completely, yielded unresisting to the human
torrent that was in full flow again.
And now he was left to himself, that mysterious entity, the
collective crowd-mind, took possession of him. Space and time
ceased to exist, his individual consciousness fell back in a dazed
recession into some dark limbo of the primitive. Merged in the
marching ranks of these men, his brothers, he felt he had
cast away his personal self If in the depths of his being, like a
warm well-spring hidden far below the surface, there still
lurked a dim awareness that he was an individual atom in a
whole, an aggregate that stood for truth and justice and the
greatest number — he paid no heed to it. He marched on and
on, his mind void of thoughts, in a light-headed ecstasy restful
as sleep.
476
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
This pleasant state lasted an hour or more — till, happening
to stub his toe on the pavement’s edge, he was jerked out of
his trance. And then he realized he was dog-tired.
Chanelled between dark cliffs of house-fronts, the procession
was still advancing with the serene persistence of a rising tide.
In the rear the singing had died away. Now and again, some
repressed emotion would break bounds, a lonely voice soar
in a cry: ‘No war! No war! Socialism for ever!’ that like an
early cock-crow wakened answering clamours on every side.
Then calm returned and for a while all was silence but for a
low sound of tramping feet, measured breathing. . . .
Looking for an opportunity to slip away, Jacques swerved
so as to be carried to the edge of the main stream, beside the
dark, shuttered shopfronts. He caught sight of a narrow side-
street thronged with people watching the procession, contrived
to edge his way amongst them, and presently reached an open
space where there was a drinking-fountain inset in a wall. The
water was falling cool and crystal-clear, with little friendly
gurgles. He drank greedily, held his hands beneath the flow
and, after bathing his forehead in its limpid coolness, took a
deep breath. Overhead the summer night sky was bright with
stars. He recalled the fighting in the streets of Paris two days
before; the riots in Berlin. In every European city the masses
were rising in the same vehement protest against the futile
butchery of war. Like scenes were taking place at Vienna in the
Ringstrasse, in Trafalgar Square in London, on the Nevsky
Prospekt at St. Petersburg where the Cossacks were riding
down the masses with drawn swords. Everywhere, in every
tongue, the same cry was rising : ‘Friede! Peace ! Mir! La PaixP
Across the frontiers of Europe the workers were stretching
forth fraternal hands towards the same ideal, in a like gesture
of fervent hope. How could any qualms be felt as to the future?
Very soon the clouds would lift and men of every nation set
to work again building a better world.
The future. . . . Jenny !
Suddenly her face had risen before him and all else was
blotted out; the violent emotions of the last few hours gave
place to a desperate longing for gentler things, for love.
477
SUMMER, 1914
He started forward again in the warm darkness. And now his
one desire was to sleep. Anywhere, on the first bench he came
across. He was unfamiliar with this part of the city and had no
idea in what direction he was going. Suddenly, as he came into
an empty square, he recognized it as the square he had crossed
earlier in the day with Paterson and Alfreda. ‘Now for a last
effort!’ he adjured himself; the place where Paterson was
staying must be quite near.
He found it without much trouble.
He had just energy enough to take off his shoes and discard
coat and collar, before dropping like a log on to the bed.
30
Wednesday^ July 2g
ALFREDA LEAVES MEYNESTREL. A TRAGEDY AVERTED
He opened his eyes abruptly; the room was flooded with light.
It took him some seconds to regain a foothold in reality. Then
he saw a man’s back ; someone on his knees packing a suit-case
at the other end of the room. . . . Paterson. Could he be leaving
already? What was the time?
‘That you, Pat?’
Without answering Paterson closed the suit-case, carried it
to the door, then walked across to Jacques’ bed. His face was
pale, his gaze defiant.
‘I’m taking her away with me,’ he said in an almost
aggressive tone.
His eyes blurred and swollen with fatigue, Jacques stared at
him, aghast.
‘Ssh! Don’t say anything!’ Paterson broke in nervously,
though Jacques had shown no sign of speaking. ‘I know. . . .
478
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20
But that’s how things are— and there’s nothing to be done
about it.’
Suddenly Jacques realized. . . . He gazed at the young
Englishman with the look of a child just roused from sleep in
the middle of a nightmare.
‘She’s waiting for me outside in a taxi. Her mind’s made up.
So is mine. She hasn’t told him, she’s sorry for him. She won’t
go and say good-bye, won’t even call for her things. We’re
taking the first train to Ostend, we’ll be in London to-morrow
evening. That’s how it’s had to be, and there’s nothing to be
done about it.’
Jacques had drawn his shoulders up on to the pillow;
resting his head against the woodwork of the bedstead, he
listened in silence.
‘I’d felt like that for months,’ Paterson went on. He was
standing motionless under the lamplight. (That’s a murderer’s
face, Jacques thought.) ‘But I never dared to speak. Not till
to-night, when she told me that she, too. . . . The poor darling,
you can’t imagine the life she’s been leading with that man. No,
he’s not a man, he’s less than that; he’s — nothing! Oh, he
did the proper thing ; he told her in advance how it would be,
and she accepted life with him on those terms. She thought
she could stick it out. She didn’t know. But now that she loves
me, it’s too much to ask of her. Don’t judge her harshly,’ he
suddenly exclaimed, as though he had caught a look of reproach
behind the stupefaction written on Jacques’ face. ‘You’ve no
idea what that man’s like. There’s nothing he’d draw the line
at — because he’s a desperate man, desperate at not being able
to believe in anything, anything whatever, even in himself —
because he himself is nothing!’
Jacques had listened without stirring; his arms stretched
out before him on the bed, he was gazing up at the ceiling, his
eyes still smarting with the glare. The window stood open.
Mosquitos hummed close against his ears, but he made no
effort to brush them away. He felt the listlessness, mingled
with a faint nausea, of one who has lost a great deal of blood.
‘Everybody has a right to live !’ Paterson broke out ragefully.
‘You can ask a man to jump into the sea to save a life, but
479
SUMMER, 1914
you can’t ask hini to keep on holding the other fellow’s head
above water till he’s drowned, himself. She wants to live. Well,
I say she has the right to, and I’m taking her away. . . . What’s
that?’
‘I’m not blaming you in any way,’ Jacques said quietly,
without turning his head. ‘But I’m thinking about him."
‘You don’t know him. He’s capable of anything. That man
is a monster, a perfect monster.’
‘It may kill him, Pat,’ Jacques said, casting a sad glance at
his friend.
Paterson’s mouth fell open, the pale features twitched as if
he had been dealt a blow, and of a sudden the young man’s
face struck Jacques as so repulsive that he looked away at once.
A murderer’s face, he thought again. After a short pause he
went on speaking, in a low, constrained voice.
‘It’s the Party I’m concerned about. It needs its leaders —
more to-day than ever before. What you’re doing, Pat, is a
betrayal. Double-dyed treachery. Treachery on every count.’
The Englishman had backed towards the door. With his cap
awry, his sallow cheeks, shifty eyes and gaping mouth, he now
looked less like an assassin than an escaping burglar.
‘Good-night,’ he said. His eyes were veiled ; he went out
quickly without meeting Jacques’ gaze.
No sooner had the door closed behind Paterson than the
thought of Jenny flashed into Jacques’ mind with a poignancy
that was almost unbearable. He was still wondering how to
account for this when he heard the sound of a car starting in
the silent street below. For a long while Jacques remained
sitting up in bed, staring at the closed door. Two faces came
and went before his eyes: the face of a bright-eyed, smiling,
light-hearted youngster — Pat, as he had known him at Geneva —
and the face he had just seen with the sullen features of a
dismissed servant or a thief caught red-handed and brazening
out his crime. A face hideously garbled by passion, with the
look that he himself must have had that night when he had
cornered Jenny in the Underground railway-station. And that
night had not he, too, been capable of the foulest infamies,
betrayals. . .?
480
WEDNESDAY, Ju£y 20
At half-past six Jacques, who had been unable to go to sleep
again, hastened to the boarding-house where Meynestrel
was staying.
No one was up yet except an old woman scrubbing the tiled
floor in the hall. For a moment Jacques wondered whether to
go upstairs or leave. But, if he was to catch the 8 a.m. train,
there was no question of calling in again later on, and after
the night’s happenings, he could not bring himself to leave
Brussels without having seen his friend once more.
He knocked at the Pilot’s door. No answer. Was it the right
door? Yes, that was No. 19, the room he had entered on the
previous day. Perhaps, after a night of vain awaiting, Meynes-
trel had fallen asleep. Jacques was about to knock again when
he heard a sound of bare feet padding across towards the door,
and a hand fumbling with the lock. A fantastic, terrifying
thought sped through his mind. Without pausing to think, he
grasped the door-knob, turned it. The door swung ajar, catching
Meynestrel in the chest just as he was about to turn the key.
They stared at each other. The Pilot’s frozen features
betrayed no visible emotion except, perhaps, a hint of annoy-
ance. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, in half a mind to
eject his visitor and close the door again. Guessing his intention
and acting on the same intuition as that which had led him to
turn the handle, Jacques thrust the door wide open with his
shoulder, and entered.
His first glance showed him that the room looked somehow
different, seemed to have grown larger. Tables and chairs
had been pushed against the walls, leaving an open space in
the middle of the room, in front of the wardrobe mirror. On
the bed the counterpane was neatly drawn back, hiding the
disordered sheets. The room gave an impression of having been
tidied up in readiness for some event. Meynestrel, too, looked
spick and ^pan in a pale blue, laundry-fresh pyjama suit.
Nothing was hanging on the cpat-pegs, nor were there any
toilet articles on the washhand-stand. It looked as if everything
had been packed up for a journey, in the two suit-cases lying
beside the window. And yet — surely the Pilot had not intended
to go out bare-footed, in pyjamas?
481
R
SUMMER, 1914
Jacques’ eyes came back to his friend, who had not moved
and was still gazing at him. Meynestrel did not seem quite
steady on his legs; he brought to mind a patient recovering
from an anaesthetic, a man who has just been snatched from
the jaws of death.
‘What were you going to do?’ Jacques faltered.
‘Eh?’ Meynestrel retreated shakily towards the wall opposite
the door and, as if he had not quite caught Jacques’ question,
murmured vaguely :
‘What am I going to do?’
Then he sat down at the table and buried his head in his
hands.
Even on the table a curious order reigned. Two sealed
envelopes were aligned side by side, face downward, and on a
neatly folded newspaper lay some personal effects — a fountain
pen, a wallet, a watch, a bunch of keys and some Belgian
money.
Jacques gazed silently at the bowed back for some moments,
not daring to make the least movement. At last he walked
towards the table. Meynestrel looked up at once.
‘Hush!’ he whispered; then, rising with an effort, said
once more, but in a quite different tone : ‘What am I going to
do? Well, old chap. I’m going to get dressed, and then I’m
going to clear out of this, with you.’
Without looking at Jacques he opened one of the suit-cases,
unpacked some clothes and laid them out on the bed, extracted
a pair of dusty shoes from the newspaper they were wrapped
in, and proceeded with his toilet as calmly as if he had been
alone. When he had finished dressing he went up to the table
and, still taking no notice of Jacques who was sitting some
distance away from it, tore up both letters into tiny fragments
and tossed them into the fireplace.
Then for the first time Jacques, who had been following
each of Meynestrel’s movements with his eyes, noticed a large
pile of ashes on the hearth ; obviously some papers had recently
been burned there. He was puzzled by the quantity of ashes;
had Meynestrel really brought so many private papers with
him? Suddenly the Stolbach dossier came to his mind and he
482
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
shot a glance at the open suit-case. It was nearly empty; there
was no sign of a bundle of documents. ‘Of course he put it
in the other suit-case,’ Jacques said to himself, brushing aside
the grotesque suspicion that had j'ust entered his mind.
Meynestrel went back to the table, picked up keys, wallet
and loose change and stowed them methodically in his pockets.
Only then he seemed to grow aware of Jacques’ presence,
and walked towards him.
‘You did well to come, old chap,’ he said, gazing into
Jacques’ eyes. ‘Who knows? Perhaps you’ve done me a great
service.’ His face was calm ; a strange smile hovered on his lips.
‘Nothing really matters, you know. There’s never anything
worth setting one’s heart on — and nothing that’s worth fearing.
Nothing in the world.’
He stretched out both hands towards Jacques; a quite
jinlooked-for gesture. As Jacques clasped them with a rush of
deep emotion, Meynestrel said softly, the enigmatic smile still
playing on his lips :
'So nimm denn meine Hdnde, und fuhre mich. . . . Now let’s be
off,’ he added, freeing his hands.
He went up to the suit-cases and picked up one of them,
Jacques made as if to pick up the other.
‘No, that one doesn’t belong to me. I’m leaving it.’
In his eyes a brief smile glimmered and was gone, forlorn
with desperate grief and love.
Jacques said to himself, aghast: ‘He’s burnt the documents!’
but dared not put a question.
They left the room together, the Pilot limping rather more
than usual.
Meynestrel walked past the cashier’s office in the vestibule
without pausing. ‘What a man!’ Jacques thought. ‘He’d even
remembered to pay his bill !’
‘Let’s see now,’ Meynestrel said, his eyes bent on a time-
table pinned to the wall beside the door. ‘I have an express
for Geneva at 7-50. What about you? The eight o’clock to
Paris, I suppose? You’ll have just time to see me off. How well
it all pans out, doesn’t it?’
483
SUMMER, 1914
31
Thursday^ July 50
JACQUES RETURNS TO PARIS AND VISITS JENNY
A BRISK, warm shower had j'ust washed Paris clean; the noon-
day sun was blazing down relentlessly when Jacques alighted
from the Brussels train.
He was in a gloomy mood ; portents of disaster were piling
up, and such impressions as he had gathered on his journey were
of an alarming order. The train was packed. An atmosphere
of consternation prevailed amongst the inhabitants of the
frontier districts. Soldiers on leave and officers on furlough in
that part of the country had received telegraphic orders to
rejoin their regiments. Jacques had lost touch with the French
delegates who were coming back from Brussels in the same
train, and had had to share an overcrowded carriage with
people from the North, who struck up conversations with their
fellow-passengers, exchanged newspapers, and bandied scraps
of information. Their comments betrayed at once anxiety and
amazement, curiosity and even a certain scepticism; but very
little panic. Indeed it seemed that most of them were already
getting reconciled to the possibility of a war. The news that
they passed round regarding the precautionary measures taken
by the French Government were highly significant. Already,
it seemed, railways, bridges, aqueducts and munition factories
were under military surveillance. A Regular Army battalion
was occupying the mills at Corbeil, the manager of which had
been denounced by the Action Frangaise as being an officer in
the German Army Reserve. In the Paris area the waterworks
were being guarded by troops. A well-dressed man, wearing a
ribbon in his buttonhole, gave an elaborate, seemingly expert
description of the changes which were being pushed through
in the wireless installation on the Eiffel Tower to increase its
efficiency. A Parisian motor-car manufacturer bewailed the
484
THURSDAY, JULY 30
fact that several hundred cars that had been got together for
a motor show had been, if not actually requisitioned, ordered
to ‘stand by’ till further orders.
Jacques had managed to buy a copy of L'Humanite at the
Saint Quentin station, and, to his amazement and indignation,
had learned that the Government had gone so far as
prohibit at the eleventh hour, the meeting that the C.G.l.
had convened for the previous day — Wednesday, . the 29th —
at the Salle Wagram; a meeting all the workers’ organizations
in Paris and the suburbs had been asked to attend, for a mass
anti-war demonstration. Such demonstrators as, defying the
official ban, had gathered in the Ternes district had been dis-
persed by charges of the mounted police. Street-fighting had
gone on far into the night, and it had been a near thing that
some bands of militants had not forced their way through to
the Presidential Residence and the Home Office. The pre-
vailing view was that Poincare’s return accounted for these
high-handed measures, which seemed to indicate a definite
intention on the part of the Government to stem the rising tide
of left-wing protest, disregarding the right of public meeting
and defying the best-established principles of republican
freedom.
The train was half an hour late. Jacques dropped in at the
buffet for a sandwich and, as he was leaving it, ran into an
elderly j'ournalist by the name of Louvel whom he had met
several times at the Cafe du Progres, and who was a sub-editoi
on the Guerre Sociale. He lived out at Creil and came to Paris
every day for his afternoon’s work on the newspaper. They left
the station together. The station yard and neighbouring build-
ings were still beflagged. The President’s return on the previous
day had been the occasion of an outburst of patriotic enthu-
siasm in Paris which Louvel had witnessed and now described
with an emotion that took Jacques by surprise.
‘I know all about that,’ Jacques broke in. ‘The papers are
full of it. It’s sickening. I suppose that at the Guerre Sociale,
anyhow, you didn’t join in the patriotic chorus.’
‘At the Guerre Sociale? Haven’t you been reading the Chief’s
leaders during the last few days?’
485
SUMMER, 1914
‘No. I’ve just come from Brussels.’
‘Then you’re behind the times, my lad.’
‘You mean that Gustave Herve . . .’
‘Herv^’s no damn-fool idealist, he sees things as they are.
For the last few days he’s been aware that war is bound to
come and it would be sheer folly — worse, a crime — to go on
making difficulties for the Government. Read his article of
the day before yesterday, and you’ll see.’
‘So Herv^’s gone jingoist !’
‘Jingoist, if you like. “Realist” would be nearer the mark.
He’s honest enough to recognize that not a single act of provo-
cation has been committed by our Government. And his con-
clusion is that, if France is compelled to fight to keep the
invader off her soil, there’s been nothing in the line French
policy has followed during the last few weeks to justify the
proletariat in letting the Government down.’
‘What! Did Herve say that?’
‘Yes, and he went further; he said in so many words that
it would be an act of treachery. For, after all, this soil that we
are called on to defend, is the soil from which ,the French
Revolution sprung.’
Jacques had halted and was staring silently at Louvel. All
things considered, he was not greatly surprised. He remem-
bered that Herve had made an emphatic stand, a fortnight
earlier, against the proposals for a general strike put forward
at the Congress of French Socialists by Vaillant and Jaur^s.
Louvel spoke again.
‘Yes, my lad, you’re behind the times. Just go and hear
what they’re saying at the Petite Republique, for instance, or
at the Centre du Parti Rdpublicain, where I was last night.
Everywhere you’ll find they’re falling into line. Everywhere
their eyes are opened. Herve isn’t the ortly one who’s grasped
the situation. It’s all very fine and large, talking about the
fraternity of nations. But we’ve got to face the facts. . . .
Well, what do you propose to do about it?’
‘Anything rather than . . .’
‘A civil war, to prevent a war with Germany, is that the
great idea? As things are, you wouldn’t get a man to follow
486
THURSDAY, JULY 30
you. With a foreign enemy at our gates, any attempt at a
revolt would simply fizzle out. Yes, my boy, even in the wor-
kers’ associations, in Internationalist milieux, the great maj'ority
have come to share the views of the general public, and are all
for defending our frontiers against invasion. Universal brother-
hood’s a fine ideal, but just now it’s got to bide its time ; what
everyone’s conscious of to-day is a narrower sort of bond — our
French fraternity. And anyhow, blast it all, we’ve put up with
those Boches and their damned nonsense quite long enough !
If they’re spoiling for a war, well, we’re ready for ’em!’
The street was suddenly invaded by a pack of newspaper-
boys yelling at the top of their voices as they dashed past:
^Paris-Midi!’
Louvel ran over to buy a copy of the paper. Jacques was
about to follow when a taxi, on the prowl for fares, slowed
down in front of him. He jumped into it. The first thing was
to get in touch with Jenny.
‘Ft tu, Hervel’ he murmured to himself despondently. Tf
such men flinch, how can the others be expected to stand firm —
the masses, the small fry, people who’re reading daily in their
papers that there are just and unjust wars, and that a war
against Prussian imperialism, to have done once for all with
the Deutschland uher alles fanatics, would be a just war, a holy
war, a crusade in the defence of democratic freedom?’
As the cab entered the street where the Fontanins lived, he
looked up towards their balcony. All the windows were open.
Perhaps, he thought, her mother has come back.
No, Jenny was alone. That he realized the moment he set
eyes on her, pale but quivering with joy, as she opened the
door and quickly stepped back into the shadows of the hall.
She cast on him a troubled gaze but so instinct with love that
he walked up to her and unthinkingly stretched out his arms.
Trembling, with closed eyes, she flung herself upon his breast.
Their first embrace. Neither had intended it and it lasted only
a few seconds. Suddenly, as if some urgent need, forgotten for
the moment, had just come back to her, Jenny freed herself,
and, pointing to the hall-table on which a newspaper was
lying, asked:
487
SUMMER, 1914
‘Is it true?’
‘What?’
‘What they say there about mobilization.’
He picked up the newspaper. It was a copy of Paris-Midi,
one of the many thousands that for the last hour had been
spreading the alarming news in Paris. The concierge, all in
a flutter, had just brought it up to the flat.
Jacques felt the blood rush to his cheeks, as he read :
‘A council of war took place last night. The iitrd Army
Corps is on its way to the frontier. The men of the viiith
Corps have been issued with their full equipment, ammuni-
tion and field rations, and are in readiness to move at
a moment’s notice.’
She was gazing at him, haggard with apprehension. Then,
abruptly, as though she had just vanquished a long reluctance,
she asked ;
‘Supposing there’s a war, Jacques, will you . . . will you
join up?’
For five days he had been awaiting that question. He looked
up and resolutely shook his head.
She thought at once: I knew it — then, brushing aside a
distasteful suggestion that had crept insidiously into her mind,
said to herself: It takes a lot of courage to refuse to fight. She
was the first to break the ensuing silence.
‘Come !’
Taking his hand, she led the way. Her bedroom door stood
open. After a momentary hesitation she drew him into the
room. He followed, unnoticing. . . .
‘Perhaps it isn’t true,’ he sighed. ‘But it may well be true
to-morrow. This war is closing in on us; there’s no breaking
through the vicious circle. Russia won’t make the least con-
cession; neither will Germany. In every country the men in
power go on putting forward the same absurd proposals,
refusing to listen to reason. . . .’
No, she thought, it isn’t fear; he’s brave. And true to him-
self. He shouldn’t act like others; he can’t give way, he must
stand out of it.
488
THURSDAY, JULY 30
Without a word she went up to him, pillowed her head on
his breast.
Suddenly she thought; Then I won’t have to lose him; and
her heart leapt with joy.
Jacques gathered her in his embrace and, bending above the
darkness of her hair, kissed the half-hidden forehead. Dazed
with happiness, she nestled in his arms, with a vague, childish
yearning to be caught up and carried far, far away, she knew
not whither. Eager as she was to question him about his trip,
she did not dare. By the pressure of his face alone he gently
forced the small, bowed head to rise, and his lips brushed the
silken smoothness of her cheek, kissing their way to the fast-
closed mouth, which did not yield but did not turn aside. She
felt her breath failing under the soft insistence of his lips, and
slipping her hand between their faces, drew her head back
a little. There was an unlooked-for serenity and thoughtfulness
in her expression ; never had she seemed more sure of herself,
more self-composed. Passionately, but without the least rough-
ness, he clasped her in his arms again, and she surrendered her-
self unresisting to his embrace, in happy trustfulness, asking no
kinder gift of life than to feel herself prisoned thus in his arms.
Cheek to cheek, still clinging to each other in a tranquil ecstasy,
they sank on to the low sofa-like bed opposite the window, and
remained for several minutes without moving or speaking.
At last she said in a low voice :
‘And I’ve still no letter from Mamma.’
‘Ah yes, of course. Your mother. . . .’
For a moment she felt indignant with him for seeming so
indifferent to her natural anxiety.
‘No news at all from her?’
‘Only a post-card to say she’d “arrived safely,” which she
sent from the Vienna station on Monday.’
This card had reached Jenny only on Wednesday morning,
the previous day, and ever since then she had vainly awaited
further news by each successive mail. No letter or telegram
had arrived, and she was feeling desperately anxious, com-
pletely at a loss to account for her mother’s silence.
Jacques’ gaze was roaming vaguely round this bedroom that
489 R*
SUMMER, 1914
he had never seen before, the discovery of which would have
thrilled him so profoundly, had he made it some days earlier.
It was a small, bright, tidy room, with a wallpaper in blue
and white stripes. The mantelpiece served as dressing-table;
ivory brushes and a pin-cushion lay on it, and some photo-
graphs were slipped into the frame of the mirror above. The
white leather blotter on the table was closed. Nothing was
lying about, except some loosely folded newspapers.
Suddenly he murmured in Jenny’s ear, ‘Your room . . . !’
Then, as she made no response, he hastily changed the subject.
‘I never dreamt your mother would persist in going to Vienna.’
‘You don’t know Mamma! Once she’s got an idea into her
head, nothing will stop her ! And, now that she’s there, she’ll
insist on carrying out her programme to the end. But — will
she be able to? What do you think? Isn’t it rather risky, being
in Austria just now? Do tell me what you think will happen.
Supposing she stays on, will they even let her return?’
‘I haven’t an idea,’ Jacques confessed.
‘What ever am I to do? I don’t know her address. And her
silence — what is one to make of it? If she’d started back, surely
she’d have sent me a wire to say so. That means she has stayed
in Vienna, and as she’s certain to have written to me, her
letters must have gone astray.’ With a trembling hand she
pointed to the newspapers. ‘When one reads about what’s
happening, one can’t help feeling dreadfully alarmed.’
Jenny had run out to buy the papers the first thing after
getting up, and hurried back to the flat to make sure of not
missing Jacques. All the morning she had been poring over
them, obsessed by the perils threatening those she loved ;
Jacques, her mother, Daniel.
She stood up.
‘Daniel’s written to me, too.’
She went and fetched a letter from the writing-case, and
handed it to Jacques. Then impulsively, with the trustfulness
of a frightened child, she snuggled up against him.
Daniel made no secret of the consternation with which Mme.
de Fontanin’s journey inspired him, and he commiserated with
Jenny for being left to bear the brunt of these chaotic hours
490
THURSDAY, JULY 30
alone. He advised her to go and see Antoine and the Hequets,
but begged her not to be unduly alarmed; there were still
hopes that the crisis would blow over. In a postscript, however,
he told her that his division was under marching orders, he
expected to leave Luneville that night, and it might be hard
for him to communicate with her during the next days.
Her head pillowed on Jacques’ breast, she watched him read
the letter, gazing up at him. As he folded it and gave it back
to her, he realized she was waiting for some heartening word
from him.
‘Daniel’s right; there’s still time for a peaceful settlement.
If only the nations understood, if the masses would make up
their minds to act . . . ! That’s what we’ve got to work for,
up to the very last moment.’
Carried away by the subject nearest his heart, he gave her
a brief account of the demonstrations at Paris, Berlin, and
Brussels. He told her how thrilled he had been by the sight
of those enormous crowds, every man of them fired with a
like enthusiasm, dauntlessly proclaiming, for all the world to
hear, his will to peace. And suddenly he felt ashamed of lin-
gering in this room, while his comrades were on active service
in the pacifist cause; he remembered the meetings appointed
for that day in the various socialist centres, and all the things
he personally had to do, the money he had to place at the
disposal of the Party at the earliest possible moment. He raised
his head and, fondling Jenny’s hair, said in a tone whose
bluntness was softened by regret:
‘I can’t stay with you, Jenny. There are so many things
I’ve got to do.’
She did not move but he felt her body stiffen, saw the dis-
appointment in her eyes. He clasped her still more closely
to his heart, strewing with kisses the forlorn, upturned face.
He felt an infinite pity ; and all the load of world- wide appre-
hension seemed to add its burden to this silent personal grief
he knew no way of consoling.
‘It’s out of the question’ — he sounded as if he were talking
to himself— ‘I can’t take you with me.’
She gave a start, then ventured :
491
SUMMER, 1914
‘Why not?’
Before he had time to realize what she was doing, she had
slipped from his arms, opened her wardrobe, taken out a hat
and gloves.
‘Jenny ! I said that, but — ! No, really it’s out of the question.
I’ve heaps to do, any number of people to meet. I’ve got to
look in at the Humanite office, at the Libertaire, and all sorts
of other places, and, later on, to go to Montrouge. What’ll you
do with yourself all the time?’
‘I can stay outside in the street.’ The note of pleading in
her voice took them both by surprise. She had cast off all
pride; those three days of separation had completely changed
her. ‘I’ll wait for you as long as necessary, I won’t be the least
drag on you. Let me come with you, Jacques, let me share your
life. No, I don’t ask that; I know it’s impossible. But don’t
leave me alone here — with these dreadful papers!’
Never had he felt her so near to him ; it was a new Jenny
at his side, a comrade in arms.
Gaily he cried, ‘I’ll take you with me. I’ll introduce you*
to my friends. And to-night we’ll go together to the Montrouge
meeting. . . . Come along!’
‘The first thing,’ he said composedly, once they were in the
street, ‘is to get that business settled about my father’s estate.
Next to find out how much truth there is in what they say
in Paris-Midi.’’
His voice was gay; Jenny’s company was making him feel
in the best of spirits. He slipped his aim through hers and
swung her along at a good pace towards the Luxembourg.
At the broker’s office — the same thing was happening at all
credit establishments, post-offices and savings-banks — the coun-
ters were being mobbed by a crowd of people changing notes
for coin. For the last two days panic conditions had prevailed
on the Stock Exchange, and the leading firms of stockbrokers
had petitioned the Government to sanction a moratorium
permitting a postponement of the July settlement, anyhow till
the end of August.
The stockbroker greeted Jacques with tokens of the utmost
esteem.
492
THURSDAY, JULY 30
‘You may congratulate yourself, sir, on being remarkably
well informed. Had you given us your instructions two days
later we shouldn’t have been able to carry them out.’
‘I know that,’ Jacques replied calmly.
Some hours later half the considerable fortune left by M.
Thibault — with the exception of 250,000 francs invested in
South American securities, that it had been impossible to
realize at such short notice— had been deposited, thanks to
Stefany’s good offices, in discreet and competent hands. Within
twenty-four hours this anonymous donation would be at the
disposal of the International Socialist Committee.
32
Thursday, July ^0
ANTOINE CALLS ON RUMELLES AT THE Q,UAI d’oRSAY
At about the same hour Antoine was walking up the staircase
at the Foreign Office, to give Rumelles his injection. For several
days, especially since the Foreign Minister’s return, Rumelles,
kept hard at it day and night, had had to give up visiting
Antoine. More than ever under the incessant strain his
nerves required their daily fillip, and it had been agreed that
Antoine was to call in regularly at the Ministry. He did not
grudge the time thus lost; those twenty minutes spent in
Rumelles’ office kept him posted as to the latest moves on the
diplomatic chessboard, and enabled him to believe that, by a
fortunate chance, he was one of a favoured few Parisians really
‘in the know.’
A number of people were in the corridor and the small ante-
room, waiting to see Rumelles. But the attendant, who knew
Antoine, showed him in at once by a side door.
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SUMMER, 1914
‘Well,’ Antoine said, taking a copy of Paris-Midi from his
pocket, ‘it looks as if events were moving apace just now!’
Rumelles had risen from his seat. He was scowling.
‘That rag! Tear the damned thing up, please! We denied
it at once ; what’s more, the Government is going to take pro-
ceedings. Meanwhile the police have confiscated all the copies
they could lay hands on.’
‘Ah! Then it’s a lie!’ Antoine exclaimed, only too eager to
be reassured.
‘Well — not altogether !’
As he set out his instruments on a corner of the desk, Antoine
looked up and cast a searching glance at Rumelles, who
was slowly undressing with a harassed air.
‘It’s quite true, last night we had a pretty nasty jar!’ It
struck Antoine that the quality of Rumelles’ voice had changed ;
fatigue muffled its wonted resonance. ‘Yes, at four this
morning we were all at our posts, and, I don’t mind telling
you, our hearts were in our boots. The Secretary of State for
War and the Minister for the Navy were summoned post-haste
to the Elysee, where the Premier was awaiting them. For two
hours they did in fact contemplate . . . extreme measures.’
‘But they didn’t decide to take them?’
‘In the end, no. Not for the present. The order has gone
round to say that the situation looks a little better this morning.
The German Government has advised us that they aren’t
mobilizing; on the contrary they’re in active pourparlers with
Vienna and St. Petersburg. So it would be unwise for us, at
the moment, to take any steps that might seem . . .’
‘But surely it’s a good sign, the way Germany’s behaving?’
Rumelles cut him short with a look.
‘It’s only a blind, my dear fellow. That’s all it amounts to.
A gesture of moderation to try, if possible, to win Italy over
to the cause of the Central Powers. A gesture that can have
no practical effect ; Germany knows as well as we do that in the
pass that things have come to Austria can’t, and Russia won’t,
draw back.’
‘But, it’s appalling, what you’re telling me. . . .’
‘Neither Austria, nor Russia. Nor the other powers, for that
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THURSDAY, JULY 30
matter. It’s j’ust that, my dear chap, that makes the situation
so devilish. In almost every European Cabinet there are men
who’re out for peace, but everywhere, too, just now there are
others out for war. There’s not a single Government that hasn’t
found itself brought to bay by the alarming possibilities of the
situation, and isn’t thinking: “After all, it’s a gamble — and,
who knows, a war may stand us in good stead!” Yes, I
assure you I Don’t you realize that every European nation has
always had some secret axe to grind, and if it gets involved
in a world war, reckons on making something out of it?’
‘Surely that’s not true of us?’
‘Even the most pacifist-minded of our leaders are already
saying to themselves: “After all, perhaps this is a chance of
settling Germany’s hash, and getting back Alsace and Lor-
raine.” Germany feels herself encircled and wants to break
through the “ring” ; England to destroy the German fleet and
filch their colonies and commerce from the Germans. Yes, each
country is looking beyond the catastrophe — which it still hopes
to avert — and already reckoning up what it stands to gain, if
a war breaks.’
Rumelles’ voice had sunk to a low, toneless muttering: he
seemed bored to death with talking, yet too tired to make the
effort of refusing speech.
‘But what’s going to happen?’ Antoine asked. So strong was
his physical repugnance for suspense and indecision, that he
would almost rather have been told then and there that war
had been declared, and that he had only to join his post.
‘And there’s something more,’ Rumelles began, ignoring the
question. He broke off, slowly finger-raked his shaggy mane,
then buried his forehead in his hands.
It seemed as if by dint of arguing round and about these
problems, hearing them threshed out from morn till night
during the last two weeks, he had ceased to realize the gravity
of the political situation. His eyes fixed on the floor, his
hands pressed to his temples, he was smiling. His shirt-tails
billowed round the plump, white thighs covered with a golden
down. The smile, a vague, almost fatuous smile — as little
‘leonine’ as it could be — was not meant for Antoine. It was
495
SUMMER, 1914
obvious the man was at the end of his tether; his face was
puffed and, on the sallow, deeply lined forehead, sweat had
plastered wisps of greying hair. He had spent the last two nights
at the Ministry. He was more than tired ; the repeated shocks
of that dramatic week had worn out his powers of resistance,
had left him helpless as a fish that has been played up stream
and down till it has no fight left. Thanks to the injections and
the kola tablets which, despite Antoine’s prohibition, he was
taking every two hours, he managed somehow to get through
his daily task, but in a condition resembling a sleep-walker’s.
The machine had been wound up and continued working, but
he had the feeling that some vital part of it had snapped ; it
was no longer under his control.
He was in a pitiable state, but Antoine’s desire to know the
truth overrode his sympathy.
‘Well then?’
Rumelles started and looked up, without removing his hands
from his forehead. His head was buzzing and felt curiously
brittle, incapable of resisting the slightest shock. No, things
couldn’t go on like that, something inside his skull was dan-
gerously near the breaking-point. At that moment he would
have cast everything to the wind, have sacrificed his career
and ambitions, for a mere half-day’s rest and solitude — any-
where, even in a prison cell.
Nevertheless he spoke again, in a still lower voice.
‘Well then, we know this much; Berlin has warned St.
Petersburg that if the Russian mobilization goes any further,
Germany will promptly mobilize. A sort of ultimatum.’
‘But what’s there to prevent Russia from calling off her
mobilization?’ Antoine cried. ‘Weren’t we told yesterday that
the Czar was proposing matters should be referred to arbi-
tration at The Hague?’
‘Quite so; only, my dear fellow, we can’t get behind the
facts. While Russia talks of arbitration, she’s mobilizing day
and night.’ Rumelles’ voice sounded curiously apathetic.
‘Russia started mobilizing, not merely without warning us, but
deliberately keeping us in the dark. And when did she start?
Some say as early as the twenty-fourth, days before Austria
496
THURSDAY, JULY 30
declared war. His Excellency Monsieur Sazonov told us quite
plainly last night that Russia’s speeding up her military pre-
parations. Monsieur Viviani who, I believe, is more sincere
than most in his desire to avoid war at all costs, was simply
horrified. If a ukase for general mobilization is officially issued
to-night at St. Petersburg, it will be no surprise to any of us.
In fact that’s why a council of war was held last night. And
that’s a much more significant fact than any well-meaning
proposal to refer matters to arbitration or even the “affec-
tionate” letters that are said to be passing every few hours
between the Kaiser and his cousin, the Czar. Why should
Russia persist in this provocative line of conduct? Is it because
Monsieur Poincare has constantly affirmed, as a measure of
prudence, that P’rance will give military aid to Russia only
in the event of Germany’s intervening? That well may be the
case. It almost looks as if Russia wanted to force Germany into
making the aggressive move that would compel France to j'oin
in with her ally.’
He fell silent, staring glumly at his knees and patting his
plump legs. Was he wondering if he should make any further
disclosures? Antoine hardly thought so; he had the impression
that just now Rumelles was in no state to judge what he should
disclose and what keep back.
‘Monsieur Poincare made a clever move,’ he said, without
looking up. ‘Very clever indeed. Listen ! Last nighthe wired toour
ambassador at St. Petersburg telling him to express the French
Government’s strong disapproval of the Russian mobilization.’
‘Good for him!’ Antoine exclaimed in innocent delight. ‘I’ve
never been amongst those who think Poincare will let us be
dragged into a war.’
Rumelles paused before replying.
‘Poincare’s idea,’ he said at last with a faint smile that came
as a surprise to Antoine, ‘his main idea was to shift the respon-
sibility from our shoulders. Now, you see, belated or not, what-
ever happens, that telegram has been sent ; it’s there on record,
to prove our desire for peace. The honour of France is saved.
In the nick of time. A very neat piece of work.’
A buzz came from the telephone. He picked up the receiver,
497
SUMMER, 1914
‘Impossible. Tell him I can’t see any pressmen just now.
No, I can’t make an exception even in his case.’
Antoine was pondering.
‘But, if France wishes, even at this stage, to put a stop to
the Russian mobilization, surely there’s a much more effective
way of doing it than announcing her official “disapproval.”
From what you told me the other day I gather that, if Russia
mobilizes before Germany, our treaties don’t oblige us to give
our aid to Russia. In which case you’ve only got to remind
friend Sazonov, with a certain emphasis, of that fact, and he’ll
have no option but to put the brakes on.’
Rumelles gave a little indulgent shrug, as if he had been
listening to a schoolboy airing his views.
‘My dear fellow, what remains of the Franco-Russian treaties
of the past? History will say if I’m mistaken, but I’ve a pretty
shrewd idea that, thanks to the wily game played by those
arch-intriguers, the Slavs — and perhaps, also to the unwise
trustfulness of our statesmen — our alliance with Russia was
renewed unconditionally at some time during the last two years.
Which means that France is bound, from the start, to join in
any military measures taken by her ally. And I suspect,’ he
added in an undertone, ‘that it’s not our Foreign Minister’s
doing.’
‘Still Viviani and Poincare are of the same mind, aren’t
they?’
‘Of the same mind? Well, obviously the answer’s: Yes. With
this reservation — that Monsieur Viviani has always stood up
against the influence of the Army group. You know that, before
he became Premier, he voted against the Three Years’ Service
Act. And yesterday, too, when he got here, he seemed quite
convinced that a peaceful settlement was feasible. I’d like to
know his thoughts at the present moment! Last night, when
he left the council of war, he looked a broken man — it was
quite painful to see him! I shouldn’t be surprised if he resigns,
in the event of mobilization.’
While speaking, he had moved with dragging steps to the
sofa, and stretched himself on it, on his side, with his nose half
buried in the cushions.
498
THURSDAY, JULY 3O
‘It’s the right thigh to-day, isn’t it, my dear doctor?’ he
asked, still in the rather pompous tone he had been using
throughout the conversation.
Antoine bent over him to make the inj’ection. There was a
brief silence before Rumelles spoke again, his voice muffled by
the cushions.
‘At the start it was the Austrians who seemed deliberately
out to defeat all our efforts to avert a war. To-day, there’s no
mistaking it, it’s Russia.’ He rose and began dressing. ‘Yes,
it’s the Russian Government that has just queered the latest
British proposals of mediation, by refusing to hear of any com-
promise. The Cabinet were hard at it all day yesterday in
London ; they’d sketched out a programme. England proposed
to recognize provisionally the occupation of Belgrade as a
guarantee taken by Austria and no more, but to insist, in
return, on Austria’s frankly stating her intentions. That would
provide, anyhow, a starting-point for negotiations. But, of
course, the unanimous consent of all the Powers was needed,
and Russia flatly refused to give heis. She laid it down as a
prime condition that hostilities in Servia were to be officially
put a stop to, and the Austrian troops were to evacuate Bel-
grade. Well, obviously, one couldn’t expect Austria to agree
to a climb-down like that. So it all fell through once more.
No, it’s no use hoodwinking ourselves. Russia has a cut-and-
dried plan, which, I suspect, has been thought out long in
advance, and she’s resolved to see it through. She won’t listen to
reason, she won’t forgo a war by which she hopes to gain, and
she’ll end by dragging us all into it. Yes, we’re for it, my friend !’
He had put on his coat and was crossing the room mechani-
cally towards the fireplace, to straighten his tie in front of the
mirror above it. Half-way across, he turned and said :
‘And do you suppose that any of us here know what actually
is happening? Far more false news than true comes in. How’s
one to tell which is which? Only think, my dear fellow ; during
the last fortnight the telephones have been buzzing night and
day in every Foreign Office and War Department, the men
in charge are being worked off their feet, they haven’t a moment
to sit back and think things out ! Just picture to yourself the
499
SUMMER, 1914
code telegrams piling up hour by hour on the, tables of the
Foreign Secretaries in every country, the reports pouring in
of the alleged secret intentions of neighbouring countries ! It’s
a witch’s cauldron of news, of contradictory assertions, all
equally urgent and alarming! How can one get a single clear
idea in this infernal tangle? A strictly confidential report comes
in from one of our special agents telling us of an imminent,
unlooked-for danger that can still be averted by a rapid counter-
stroke. Well, if we decide to deal that counterstroke, and the
news turns out to be false, our action will have made the
situation worse; we may even find that we’ve provoked the
enemy into taking some decisive step, and ruined the prospects
of negotiations that were on the point of being pushed through.
But, supposing the danger is a real one, and we don’t take
action? To-morrow it well may be too late to act. . . . Yes,
Europe is literally staggering, like a drunken man, under this
avalanche of news, half true, half false.’
He was stumping up and down the room, settling his collar
with a shaky hand, himself staggering a little — like Europe —
under the intolerable burden of his thoughts.
‘Just now, everyone’s throwing stones at the diplomatists,
poor devils,’ he sighed. ‘Yet they’re the only people who might
have saved the cause of peace. And quite likely they’d have
pulled it off, had they been able to get down to it, to con-
centrate on the real issues ; the trouble is they have to dissipate
the best part of their energies on humouring the amour-propre
of individuals and nations. Yes, it’s a sad business I’
He halted beside Antoine, who was closing his instrument-case.
‘And then,’ Rumelles continued, as if he had lost the knack
of silence and had to think aloud^ — ‘the diplomatists and states-
men aren’t the only ones controlling things at present. Here,
at the Quai d’Orsay, for some days past, we all have had the
feeling that politics, diplomacy, have had their hour. In every
country another set of men is taking charge : the Army. They
have the whip hand, for they speak in the name of national
defence, and the civil administration has to bow to their
decisions. Yes, even in the least militarist countries, the reins
of power are already in the hands of the General Staff, and
500
THURSDAY, JULY 30
when things have come to that, my dear fellow. ; . .’A slight
lift of the shoulders completed the sentence, and again a joyless,
almost fatuous smile hovered on his lips.
The telephone pealed.
For some seconds he stared at it without moving.
‘Yes, we’re in a perfectly appalling jam,’ he murmured with-
out looking up. ‘It’s as if the gears had got locked somehow
of their own accord and the engine out of control. We’re
heading straight for the abyss, the brakes won’t act, and we’re
being carried downhill by our own momentum, and gaining
speed every second. It takes one’s breath away. . . . The
situation seems to have got out of hand; things are in the
saddle. Nobody wants a war. Not a soul. Neither the statesmen
nor the Kings. Nobody that we know of. We all have an
impression of having been stampeded, reduced to impotence ;
and of having been tricked — but how or by whom none can
say. Everybody’s doing just what he vowed he’d never do;
what, only the day before, he was absolutely determined not
to do. It’s as if the leading men in every country had suddenly
turned into automata, the puppets of ruthless occult powers
that are pulling the strings from some infinitely remote point
high above our heads. . . .’
He was still gazing bemusedly at the telephone, his hand rest-
ing on the receiver. At last he straightened himself up. Before
answering the call, he waved a genial farewell to Antoine.
‘See you to-morrow, old chap. . . . Excuse me, if I don’t
escort you to the door.’
33
Thursday, July jo
SIMON DE BATTAINCOURT CONSULTS ANTOINE, WHO DECIDES TO
BREAK WITH ANNE
When he left the Ministry, Antoine was feeling so tired, so
upset and on edge, that, though he had a very full day’s work
501
SUMMER, 1914
ahead, he decided for a short rest at his place before continuing
his round. He kept on telling himself, though without quite
succeeding in making it seem plausible: ‘Within a month,
perhaps. I’ll be in uniform, plunged into the Unknown.’
As he was turning into the portico he saw, leaving the vesti-
bule, a man who stopped on catching sight of him.
It was Simon de Battaincourt. ‘The husband!’ Antoine
bethought himself, on the defensive.
He had not recognized the man at once though they had
met several times in former days, and once, more recently,
when Anne’s little daughter had been put into a plaster jacket.
Simon was apologetic.
‘Silly of me! I thought it was your consulting-day, doctor.
Anyhow I’ve made an appointment for to-morrow. But I’m
particularly anxious to get back to Berck to-night and, if it
wouldn’t inconvenience you too much. . . .’
‘What the devil does he want of me?’ Antoine was thinking.
His suspicions were on the qui vive, but he was resolved to put
a good face on it and not to seem to shirk the interview.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said rather unamiably. ‘My whole day’s
booked up, and I’m afraid that’s the most I can spare you.
Come up with me.’
Wedged beside him in the stuffy lift, disagreeably conscious
of the mingling of their breaths, the odours of their bodies,
Antoine felt his antipathy for the man heightened by a curious
physical disgust, as he repeated to himself: ‘The husband. . . .
This fellow is Anne’s husband.’
Suddenly, with a gentle, rather boyish smile flickering on
his face, Battaincourt asked abruptly :
‘I say, you don’t really think we’ll be dragged into a war,
do you?’
‘I’m beginning to fear it,’ Antoine replied gloomily.
The young man looked aghast.
‘But, look here — it’s unthinkable ! I can’t believe we’ve let
things come to that !’
Antoine did not reply. He was fumbling with his keys. As
he opened the door, he said :
‘Go ahead.’
502
THURSDAY, JULY 30
‘I’ve come to ask your advice about my little Huguette,’
Simon began.
There was something appealing in the emotion with which
he uttered the little girl’s name; he had come to love her as
if she were his own daughter and was, indeed, devoting
his life to nursing her back to health. He plunged into a
detailed account of her condition. She was bearing, he said,
the constant immobility imposed on her by the plaster jacket,
with ‘angelic’ patience. She spent nine or ten hours a day in
the open air. He had bought for her a little white donkey to
draw the coffin-like wheel-chair in which she always lay, to
the sunniest corners of the sand-dunes. In the evenings he read
to her, and taught her a little history and geography.
Steering Battaincourt towards his consulting-room, Antoine
listened in silence ; professional interest had got the upper hand
again, he was trying to piece together, from his companion’s
desultory chatter, a picture of the girl’s actual state of health.
Anne had passed clean out of his mind. It was only when he
saw Battaincourt settling into the arm-chair in which his
mistress had so often sat, that a curiously insistent thought
assailed him: ‘That man over there who’s speaking, and has
just poured out his heart to me, is a man whom I’m deceiving,
cheating of his rights- — and he has no idea of it.’
At first the only feeling produced in him was a vague dis-
comfort of a physical order, like the vexation caused by a dis-
tasteful, not to say slightly revolting contact. But then Simon
stopped talking rather abruptly, looking a little embarrassed,
and a faint suspicion crossed Antoine’s mind : Is it possible
he knows?
‘But I haven’t come to Paris,’ Battaincourt said after a while,
‘just to tell you about my experiences as a male nurse.’ He
paused, and Antoine could not keep out of his expression a
certain eagerness, which encouraged Battaincourt to proceed.
‘Yes, it’s because I’m up against some rather tiresome prob-
lems, and letters are so apt to be misleading, aren’t they? So
I preferred to come and see you and talk things over.’
Antoine reflected quickly: After all, why shouldn’t he know?
In the brief silence that followed his thoughts ran riot.
503
SUMMER, 1914
‘It’s this,’ Simon said at last. ‘I’m far from certain that the
Berck air really agrees with Huguette.’ And launched into a
longwinded description of the climate.
He explained that there had been a definite slowing-down
in Huguette’s convalescence since Easter. The local doctor —
who surely might be expected to stand up for the advantages
of the Berck climate — was rather inclined to think sea-air was
unsuitable for his little patient. Perhaps mountain air would
be better. As it happened, Mary — Huguette’s English gover-
ness — had received from some English friends glowing accounts
of a young doctor in the western corner of the Pyrenees, who,
it seemed, had specialized in this type of malady and had some
quite remarkable successes.
Unmoving in his chair, Antoine gazed at the finely drawn
features, with the deer-like, elongated profile, and fair, almost
pallid cheeks that even the brisk air of the dunes had failed
to tan. Antoine seemed to be listening, weighing the pros and
cons of Battaincourt’s suggestions. Actually his thoughts were
far away. He was recalling what Anne, in her rare moments
of expansiveness, had told him about her husband’s, character.
She had accused him of being a ‘waster,’ treacherous, selfish,
vain and spiteful in an underhand way. Until now he had seen
no reason to mistrust the portrait she had given him of the
man, for she always spoke of Simon in a tone of airy detach-
ment and disdain which seemed to vouch for her impartiality.
But now he had the original before his eyes, he was beginning
to feel puzzled, hopelessly at sea.
‘Don’t you think I’d better take Huguette to Font-Romeu?’
Battaincourt enquired.
‘Certainly,’ Antoine murmured. ‘It’s quite a good idea, very
likely.’
‘Naturally I’d stay with her down there. It’s the back of
beyond, of course, but 1 don’t mind, if it’s likely to do the
child good. As for my wife’ — at the thought of Anne a look
of vague distress, quickly repressed, flitted across his face — ‘she
doesn’t come to see us often at Berck,’ he confessed, with a smile
that tried to be indulgent. ‘Paris is so near, you understand.
She’s always being invited out by friends and lets herself get
504
THURSDAY, JULY 30
snowed under by her social duties. But if she settled at Font-
Romeu with us, perhaps she’d manage to break loose from
all that.’
A far-away look came into his eyes, as he fondly pictured
a renewal of their life together, but it could be seen that he
had little real hope of it. Obviously he still loved Anne, and
suffered by his love, as much as ever.
Then in an enigmatic tone he muttered :
‘Perhaps everything would be different.’
Antoine could clearly see how, on a superficial view, Anne’s
opinion of Simon could be justified. Nevertheless a conviction
was forcing itself upon him with ever-increasing cogency that
the man opposite him in the arm-chair was totally different
from the portrait Anne had drawn of him. ‘Treacherous,
selfish, spiteful!’ Five minutes’ observation of Battaincourt, the
impression gleaned from even a brief contact with him by
an observer with the slightest quickness in the uptake, the least
intuition, were enough to refute these epithets. On the contrary,
straightforwardness, goodness of heart and modesty shone out
in everything he said, even in the clumsiness of his manners.
‘A weakling, yes,’ Antoine decided. ‘The prey of scruples and
perhaps a bit of a fool. But a monster of duplicity — most
assuredly not !’
Meanwhile Simon was tranquilly proceeding with his mono-
logue. His gentle eyes aglow with gratitude, he was explaining
that of course he would never have dreamed of taking any
step of such a serious nature without first consulting Antoine.
He knew Antoine’s skill and devotion, and put himself un-
reservedly in his hands. He had even ventured to hope that
Antoine might find time to run down to Berck for a few hours
and see his little patient before making a final decision. Though
he quite understood, under the present circumstances, this
might well be difficult. . . .
Antoine was listening now with all his ears. He had just
resolved to break with Anne for good and all.
Had he really settled on this course only during these last
minutes? Or was it not truer that this resolve had been hovering
in the background of his mind for many a long day? Could it
505
SUMMER, 1914
even be called a ‘resolve’ — this prompt, unthinking surrender
to an inner need which had suddenly become urgent, in-
eluctable? Given the leisure for analysing his feelings, he would
certainly have found that his persistence during the last week
in refusing to answer Anne’s telephone-calls and in evading
the various appointments she had tried to make with him
through Leon, had pointed to a secret, unformulated desire
to break with her. He would even have had to own to himself
that, though politics might seem utterly irrelevant to his ‘affair’
with Anne, the tragic hours through which Europe was passing
had played their part in estranging him from her. It was as if
this liaison had become unworthy of certain new emotions and
dwindled to a poor and paltry thing by contrast with the world-
shaking events in progress.
Be this as it might, it was Simon’s visit that had led him
to decide for an immediate break, and even to regard it now,
unwittingly, as something already perpetrated and irrevocable.
The experience of facing this forlorn, bewildered man, • of
accepting his confidences and consideration with an hypo-
critical air of innocence, of finding him, in his ignorance of
the wrong that had been done him, appealing to himself as
to a loyal friend — all this had been too much for Antoine.
Half-formulated thoughts had gone racing through his mind.
‘No, it doesn’t pan out. Such things shouldn’t happen. That’s
not how life should be. I come first, yes; my pleasures, my
satisfactions. But they’re not all. Others may be involved,
human destinies that it would be criminal to immolate light-
heartedly. It’s because of people like me and lives like mine,
that the world’s so topsyturvy, so full of lies, injustice, wretched-
ness.’
The curious thing was that the moment he had made that
silent, immutable decision, ‘Everything’s over between Anne
and myself,’ all the past seemed to be blotted out as if by
magic ; it was exactly as if nothing had been between them.
He could look Battaincourt in the eyes without the least
discomfort; could smile, give him advice and encouragement
to his heart’s content. When, bashful as a schoolboy, Simon
murmured something about having ‘overstayed the ten
506
THURSDAY, JULY 30
minutes,’ Antoine laughed and gave him a friendly tap on
the shoulder. They walked side by side to the hall-door in
friendly conversation. Antoine even promised to come to Berck
some day next week. For the moment he had forgotten every-
thing, even the war. . . . Suddenly a thought of it flashed
back, and it struck him that the imminence of a catastrophe
which looked like making havoc of all conventional values
might well account, to some extent, for his being able to take
this tete-a-tete, singular as it was, so composedly. Tn a month
or two, quite possibly, both of us will be dead,’ he mused.
‘And, that being so, how trivial everything else seems !’
‘The eight-thirty train gets you to Rang about eleven, and
to Berck in time for lunch,’ Simon explained, beaming with
delight.
‘Circumstances permitting . . .,’ Antoine pointed out.
The young man’s face fell; the blood left his cheeks. For
a moment he pressed his clenched fist to his lips, his eyes wide
with anguished apprehension. And Antoine had j’ust then a
positive conviction that the old Huguenot, Colonel Count de
Battaincourt’s son was quaking at the prospect of service in
the field.
‘What ever will become of Huguette,’ Battaincourt sighed,
looking away from Antoine, ‘if I’m called up for service? She’ll
only have that English governess. . . .’ At that moment both
men were thinking about Anne, on almost the same lines.
Battaincourt said no more till he was on the landing. He
looked back at Antoine standing in the doorway.
‘Which day do you join your regiment?’
‘On the first day. As M.O. in an infantry regiment. The
54th, at Compiegne. And you?’
‘The third day. As sergeant in the 4th Hussars, at Verdun.’
They shook hands with almost fraternal warmth. After a
last friendly wave of his hand Antoine slowly closed the
door.
For a moment he stayed unmoving, staring at the carpet.
A vivid picture had forced itself upon his consciousness; of
Sergeant Battaincourt, incongruous in his hussar uniform,
galloping at the head of his troop across the Alsatian plains.
507
SUMMER, 1914
A shrill peal of the telephone jerked him out of his musings.
‘I wonder if it’s sheT A tight smile pursed his lips, and a
sudden impulse came over him to hurry to the telephone and
tell her brutally that all was over. Then he heard Leon take
off the receiver and say at the far end of the hall :
‘Yes, sir. Friday, August the seventh, at three? Professor
Jeantet speaking? Very good, sir. I’ll make a note of it.’
Antoine was going down the stairs, turning over the pages
of his pocket diary, when a sound of familiar voices on the first
floor, made him look up. Opening the door, he glanced into
the room used as the Record-Room of his laboratory.
Studler and Roy were engaged in an argument. They were
not wearing their white coats and the tables and chairs were
strewn with newspapers.
‘Well, young fellows ; is that your idea of doing your jobs?’
Antoine laughed.
Studler shrugged his shoulders gloomily, while Roy rose from
his chair and shot a questioning glance at Antoine.
‘Have you seen Rumelles, Chief?’
‘Yes. The news in Paris-Midi is false. It’s been officially
denied. But things are going from bad to worse.’ After a pause,
he added glumly : ‘Yes, we’re on the brink of the abyss.’
‘And meanwhile Germany’s making her preparations,’
Studler grunted.
‘So are we — thank goodness !’ Roy exclaimed.
There was a pause.
Then ‘our last chance of peace,’ Studler sighed, ‘lies with
the working classes. But they’ll tumble to it only when it’s too
late. There’s a shocking fatalism in the attitude the man-in-the-
street takes up towards war. And of course it’s easy to account
for; people have their minds warped in school — by the way
their masters talk to them about past wars, and glory, and the
Flag, and the Fatherland and so on — and after that, by their
military service. To-day we’re paying dear for all that tom-
foolery.’
Roy kept an ironic silence.
Antoine put on his hat again. ‘^Au revoir^ he said abruptly.
‘I’ll never have time for all my visits. See you this evening.’
508
THURSDAY, JULY 30
After he had gone, Roy went up to the Caliph and planted
himself squarely in front of him,
‘As we were bound to be “for it” one day or another, you
can’t deny anyhow that the present moment suits our book
as well as any !’
‘Oh, stop it, Roy old chap !’
‘No, but look here! Try to take an unprej'udiced view for
a change. By and large, things look pretty good for us j’ust
now. It’s all to the interest of France that the war should start
off as between Germany and Russia ; that ensures the Russians’
coming in with us, and we’ll be able to take the line of standing
by an ally — always the best line to take. Then, again, we’ve
had time enough — at least I hope so — to put through our
mobilization on the quiet without having had to face that
famous “lightning attack” which was the bogey of our General
Staff. All of which improves our prospects.’
Studler gazed at him silently.
‘Look here I’ Roy said again. ‘If you’re honest with yourself,
you’re bound to admit that the moment’s pretty well chosen
for having it out with them, and at long last restoring our
national honour.’
‘Our national honour !’ Studler roared, spluttering with rage.
The door opened and Jousselin entered.
‘Still at it, you two^’ he wearily enquired.
Unlike the others, he was in his white laboratory coat. Not
that he had any more illusions than they as to the future ; only
too well he guessed that in three weeks’ time he would no
longer be there to observe the results of the inoculations to
which he had devoted his morning. But he made a point of
‘carrying on,’ as if nothing untoward was to happen. ‘For one
thing,’ he had said to Antoine, a melancholy smile glimmering
in the grey depths of his eyes, ‘for one thing, it prevents one
thinking,’
‘Everywhere,’ Studler cried with a contemptuous gesture,
‘they’re talking the same damn-fool nonsense : at this end about
“the honour of France,” over there about Austrian ''amour-
propre,'” and in Russia about “Slav prestige,” the duty of pro-
tecting the Balkan States, As if there weren’t a thousand times
509
SUMMER, 1914
more “honour” in preserving peace amongst the nations — even
if one’s got to eat one’s words to do it — than in launching them
into the shambles of a war.’
It infuriated him to see the nationalists always claiming for
themselves a monopoly in noble sentiments, unselfish motives
and the heroic virtues. For, though not a member of any
political party, he was well aware that the militant revolu-
tionaries who in every capital were putting up a desperate
fight against the forces making for war, were, more authenti-
cally than any other group of men, inspired by feelings of the
loftiest self-abnegation, by a firm resolve to spare no pains in
the pursuit of an arduous ideal, by the valour and great-
heartedness that are the stuff of heroism.
The Caliph was not looking at Jousselin or Roy; the trance-
like fixity of his gaze brought to mind an oriental prophet rapt
in his vision.
At last he seemed to waken from his trance, and continued
indignantly :
‘National honour indeed ! Yes, they’ve mobilized already all
the high-sounding slogans to help them drown the voice of
conscience. Anything to cloak the idiocy of it all, to stifle the
least glimmer of common sense ! Honour, patriotism, justice,
civilization! And what’s behind all those fine decoy words?
Commercial interests, competition for world-markets, rackets
put up by business men and politicians, the never-ending greed
of the ruling class in every land ! Did you ever hear such
nonsense? They propose to “save civilization” by behaving
like bloody savages, by giving man’s basest instincts a free
run. To defend the cause of justice by organized, anonymous
murder, by shooting down poor devils who don’t wish us any
harm, but have been induced by the same infernal claptrap
to join up against us. It’s preposterous, preposterous !’
‘Hear, hear !’ Roy put in disdainfully.
‘Steady on, old chap !’ said Jousselin soothingly, placing his
hand on Roy’s shoulder.
He shared Antoine’s feelings towards Manuel Roy, the
youngest of their trio. He was genuinely fond of him — though
he would have been puzzled to say exactly what attracted him
510
THURSDAY, JULY 30
in the youngster. Perhaps his quiet courage, his open-hearted
spontaneity. In the personality of this young fire-eater, with his
zest for action and his chivalrous naivety, he discerned a certain
beauty — precisely that type of beauty which could but appeal
to him, a man of the laboratory and researches on the abstract
plane. And he respected the pure and selfless idealism he found
in Roy, his simple faith in the regenerative virtues of war — for
which quite probably he would pay with his life.
‘ “Honour” !’ he mused aloud. ‘I think we’ve made a great
mistake in letting moral standards intrude where they have no
concern — ^in the economic struggle that’s going on between the
nations of the world. That mistake has falsified, embittered the
whole business, and it rules out any realistic compromise. It
camouflages as a conflict of ideals and a “holy war” what
should be, and indeed is, no more than trade rivalry between
competing firms.’
‘Caillaux, in 1911, understood that very well,’ the Caliph
broke in excitedly. Tf it hadn’t been for him . . .’
Roy cut him short.
T suppose you’d rather see your friend Caillaux bossing it
in the Foreign Office to-day than standing in the dock.’
‘One thing’s sure, my lad : if he had stayed in power, things
wouldn’t have come to the pass they’ve got to now. If it hadn’t
been for him, this jolly old war, the prospect of which seems
to fill you and your fellow-patriots with such delight, would
have come off three years earlier — for the greater joy of the
nations. He didn’t rant about “national honour,” not he! He
talked business, and, in the teeth of general opposition, stuck
to hard facts, kept to the level of the interests at stake. Thanks
to which he was able to stave off disaster.’
Seeing a glint of anger kindle in Roy’s eyes, Jousselin hastened
to intervene.
‘I quite agree that, providing statesmen can bring themselves
to keep severely to hard facts, there’s no quarrel between
nations that can’t be settled on diplomatic lines, by mutual
concessions. It’s easier to reconcile interests than ideas. I agree,
too, that Caillaux is the man to bring it off. And, if this war
materializes, I rather think that the historians — who’ve made
5 ”
SUMMER, 1914
SO much of Cleopatra’s nose ! — will ascribe its due importance
to that tragic revolver shot at the Figaro office, when they’re
unravelling the causes of the war.’
Roy emitted a self-confident guffaw.
‘Right-oh !’ he laughed. ‘We’ll let it go at that — I leave it
to the future to refute you.’
34
Thursday^ July jo
JACQ,UES ADDRESSES A GATHERING IN THE MONTROUGE DISTRICT
‘Let’s go with them,’ Jacques had said to Jenny, referring to
a dozen of his friends who had met at the Cafe du Croissant
and were going on together to the Montrouge meeting, at
which Max Bastien was to speak.
Socialist gatherings were taking place that night in all the
Paris districts. Vaillant had promised to address the Belleville
meeting. The students in the Latin Quarter had arranged for
a meeting of their own in the Bal Bullier.
They took a ’bus to the Chatelet, then a tram to the Porte
d’Orleans, where they changed into another tram that brought
them as far as Montrouge Church. There they had to alight
and make their way on foot, along crowded streets, to the
disused theatre in which the gathering was taking place.
It was a stifling night and the air in this working-class suburb
was full of unpleasant smells. The whole population seemed
to have turned out into the streets after the evening meal ;
everyone looked anxious, at a loss. The larger thoroughfares
were loud with the cries of newspaper-boys selling late special
editions.
512
THURSDAY, JULY 30
Jenny kept stumbling on the cobbles that paved the old-
lashioned streets. The heavy crape veil she wore and the smell of
dye the heat was bringing out of it were giving her a headache.
And she felt out ofplace in her mourning costume amongst all these
people in working attire instinctively she had taken off her gloves.
Jacques, as he walked beside her, could not help seeing the
effort it cost her to keep up with him, but he was chary of
giving her his arm; in his friends’ company he treated her as
a ‘comrade.’ He shot her now and again an encouraging
glance, while discussing with Stefany the latest news that had
come in at the Humamte office.
Stefany took a hopeful view; he expected much of the
agitation amongst the working class which had, so he averred,
blazed up into life again. Public anti-war demonstrations were
growing more and more numerous. There had been a mani-
festo from the Socialist Party, another from the Parliamentary
Socialists, another from the C.G.T., another from the Trade
Union Federation of the Seine Department, another from the
League for Freedom of Thought.
‘Everywhere our people are up and doing,’ he declared, his
dark eyes aglow with hope. ‘Everywhere they’re bringing
pressure on the Government.’
An Irish socialist just back from Westphalia, who had been
dining at the ‘Croissant,’ had told him that that very night
a monster pacifist demonstration was to take place at Essen,
the headquarters of the German steel industry and Krupp’s
munition works. The Irishman had gone so far as to assure
him that a great many workers had decided, at secret meetings,
to sabotage their jobs, so as to force the Imperial Government
to abandon any thought of war.
In the course of the afternoon, however, an alarming rumour
had gone round the editorial department of his paper. It was
said that the Kaiser, after having in terms amounting to an
ultimatum called on Sazonov for further information regarding
the mobilization in Russia, and having got the reply that the
mobilization was only ‘partial,’ but there could be no question
of countermanding it — had given instructions to draw up an
order for mobilization. During two hours the situation had
513
s
SUMMER, 1914
looked desperate. Then the German Ambassador had denied
the rumour in such categorical terms that it seemed certain
the rumours of a German mobilization were, in fact, unfounded.
It had been ascertained that the responsibility fqr this false
alarm — a counterblast, across the frontier, to the canard fathered
by Paris-Midi — lay with the Lokalanzeiger, Meanwhile these
alternations of alarm and reassurance were keeping public
opinion dangerously on edge, and Jaures feared more than
anything else the evil influence of such recurrent gusts of panic.
He was insisting on every possible occasion that the duty of
each group, of every household, was to fight down these vague
apprehensions, which infected people’s minds with notions of
an ‘inevitable’ war in self-defence, and played into the hands
of the war-mongers.
‘Have you seen him since he came back?’ Jacques asked.
‘Yes, I’ve just spent two hours working with him.’
No sooner back from Belgium — before even getting in touch
with the Parliamentary Group of Socialists and reporting to
them the work done at the Brussels Congress — the Skipper had
convened his associates with a view to making plans for the
International Congress to be held at Paris on August 9th. The
French Party had a bare ten days ahead for organizing this
highly important conference and ensuring its success; there
was not a moment to waste.
His presence at the Humanite offices had given a fillip to the
energies of his staff. He had come back greatly heartened by
the firm stand taken by the German socialists, full of confidence
in the pledges they had given him, and keener than ever on
speeding up the peace campaign. The conduct of the Govern-
ment in prohibiting the meeting at the Salle Wagram had
greatly shocked him ; he had promptly decided to take up the
challenge of authority and give the defenders of the cause of
peace a brilliant revenge, by arranging for a monster indig-
nation meeting on the following Sunday, August 2nd.
‘Stick it out, Jenny !’ Jacques touched her arm. ‘We’re almost
there.’
She saw a police squad drawn up under a portico. Young men
were selling copies of La Baiaille Syndicaliste and Le Libertaire.
514
THURSDAY, JULY 30
They entered a blind alley in which groups of men, absorbed
in heated debate, were dawdling instead of entering the theatre.
The meeting, however, had already begun, and the house was
full.
‘Have you come to hear Bastien?’ asked a militant who was
just leaving. ‘Seems he’s kept back at the Council and won’t
be coming.’
Greatly disappointed, Jacques was about to turn and go,
when he realized that Jenny was too exhausted to make a
move at once. Paying no more attention to his friends, he led
her to one of the front rows where he had noticed two empty seats.
The local Secretary, a man named Lefaur, was seated on
the stage behind a garden table.
The speaker facing the footlights was a Town Councillor.
In the course of his address he announced several times that
war was an ‘annychronism.’
The audience apparently paid no attention ; they were
chattering amongst themselves.
Now and then the chairman rapped the metal table, bel-
lowing ‘Silence!’
‘Have a good look at their faces,’ Jacques whispered. ‘One
can almost classify revolutionaries by their looks. Some have
“revolution” in the set of their jaws, others in the expression
of their eyes.’
Jenny thought: And he . . .? Instead of looking at the
people near her, she scrutinized Jacques’ face, his prominent,
stubborn chin, his restless, rather harsh eyes, glowing with vital
energy.
‘Are you going to speak?’ she whispered shyly. She had been
asking herself that question all the way; she wanted him to
speak, so as to admire him all the more, but a kind of bash-
fulness made her dread the prospect of it.
‘I don’t expect so.’ He slipped his hand under her arm.
‘I’m not much good at that sort of thing. On the few occasions
when I’ve spoken in public. I’ve always been paralysed by
a feeling I was being carried away by the sound of my own
voice and everything I said gave a wrong twist to my ideas,
indeed falsified them.’
SUMMER, 1914
That was her greatest joy : hearing him analyse himself for
her benefit ; and yet she usually had the impression of having
guessed already all he told her about himself. While he spoke,
she could feel his hand fondling her elbow, and it thrilled her
so that she could think of nothing but the sensation of gentle
warmth stealing up her arm.
‘Always, you know,’ he went on, ‘I’ve a vague feeling that
what I say isn’t quite the truth, that I overstate what I believe.
It’s a ghastly feeling, I assure you !’
It was true. But it was equally true that the experience of
speaking in public worked on him like a heady liquor, and
that he rarely failed to establish contact, indeed an active
intimacy, with his audience.
Another militant, a burly, bull-necked man, had replaced
the previous speaker. His deep bass voice had held his audience
from the start. He proceeded to hurl at them a series of peremp-
tpry assertions, so disconnected that it was impossible to follow
the thread of his ideas.
‘The reins of power have fallen into the hands of the ex-
ploiters of the masses. Universal suffrage? It’s a ramp, a bloody
swindle. The workers are at the mercy of a gang of profiteers.
Thanks to the capitalist armament-manufacturers and their
dirty scheming, all Europe’s been turned into a powder-
magazine that may blow up at any moment. Say, mates, are
you going to let ’em turn you into cannon fodder just to earn
nice fat dividends for the shareholders in Creusot’s?’
Bursts of cheering greeted each of the short, breathless
phrases that fell like sledge-hammer blows upon his listeners’
heads. He was obviously used to applause; he stopped with
a jerk after each phrase and stayed a full minute gaping at
his audience as if he had a may-bug stuck in his throat.
Jacques turned to Jenny.
‘It’s ridiculous. That’s not what they should be told. The
thing is to convince them that they stand for the greatest
number, they have the last word. They’re vaguely aware of
it, but they don’t feel it. It’s something they can only realize
by putting it actually, decisively, to the test. And that’s yet
another reason why it’s so important that the proletariat should
516
THURSDAY, JULY 3O
win to-day. Once they’ve discovered that, in actual practice,
they’re strong enough to put an absolute stop to any aggressive
policy and force their Governments to climb down, then and
then only, will they realize their strength, and know there’s
nothing they can’t do. And when that day comes. . . !’
Meanwhile the audience was beginning to weary of the
spate of incoherent slogans launched at their heads. In
one corner of the theatre a mild dispute had developed into a
brawl.
‘Silence!’ roared the chairman. ‘The Party discipline must
be observed. Don’t you know the orders? Do keep calm, boys,
do keep calm!’
He was obviously terrified at the prospect of a disturbance
which might bring the police in; his one desire was for the
meeting to pass off quietly.
Silence was momentarily restored by the appearance of
a new speaker, the last on the list. Levy Mas, Professor of
History at Lakanal, was famous for his socialist pamphleteering
and his brushes with the University authorities. The theme
he had chosen for his speech was a review of Franco-German
relations since 1870. With a great parade of erudition he set
forth the issues at stake, and had been on his feet fully twenty-
five minutes before coming to deal with the Serajevo crime.
He spoke of ‘plucky little Servia’ with a break in his voice that
set the eyeglasses trembling on his pointed nose. Then he
launched into an elaborate comparison between the two allied
groups, between the Austro-German treaty and the Franco-
Russian.
Out of all patience, his hearers were beginning to heckle
the professor.
‘Brass tacks! Get down to brass tacks!’
‘Tell us what to doV
‘Aye, tell us how to stop this war !’
More and more flustered, Lefaur pleaded in vain for silence.
‘It’s just sickening,’ Jacques whispered in Jenny’s ear. ‘All
these people have come here to be given a lead, to be told what
to do, in plain, practical terms. And now they’re going to be
sent back home with their heads stuffed with political history,
5W
SUMMER, 1914
and the impression that the whole business is too complicated
for them to fathom, and there’s nothing for it but to bow to
the inevitable.’
Shouts were ringing out across the tumult.
‘What’s the truth about it? What’stheGovernmentplayingat?’
‘We want to know the truth.’
‘Aye, the truth. That’s the goods !’
L6vy Mas faced up to his hecklers ;
‘You want the truth? Well, the truth is that France is a
peace-loving nation and has been proving it to the hilt during
the last fortnight — to the consternation of the Imperialist
Powers. We may criticize our Government for its domestic
administration, but to-day it’s doing its best in most difficult
circumstances. It’s up to us socialists not to make those diffi-
culties worse. Needless to say, we are disgusted by the jingoist
claptrap of the bourgeois press. But one thing is sure, and it’s
our duty to proclaim it for all the world to hear ; not a single
Frenchman would refuse to defend his native soil against
another invasion.’
Jacques, who was boiling with rage, turned to Jenny again.
‘Do you hear? If he wanted to prepare these people’s minds
for a war he couldn’t go about it better. It would be enough
to-morrow to tell them that the Germans are going to attack
us — and they’d obey any order that was given them, meek
as lambs !’
Her gaze lingered on his face.
‘Tou speak to them.’
Without answering, he stared at the orator. He felt the
audience growing more restive every moment, and in their
mood discerned an undercurrent of pent-up, generous emotion,
a readiness for revolutionary action, which it was a crime not
to turn to good account.
‘I will !’ he suddenly declared, raising his hand to ask leave
to speak.
The chairman gazed at him attentively for a moment, then
deliberately looked away.
Jacques scribbled his name on a piece of paper, but could
find no one to take it to Lefaur.
518
THURSDAY, JULY 30
Meanwhile, in an increasing hubbub, Ldvy Mas was winding
up his homily.
‘I grant you that things have come to a highly critical pass.
But we need not despair so long as the Government has the
full weight of public opinion behind it in seeking a peaceful
solution of the crisis. Read once again the articles of our great
leader, Jaures. Those swashbucklers across the frontier, who are
trying to pick a quarrel with us must be made to realize that our
statesmen and diplomatists are backed by the unanimous desire
of all French socialists to defend the cause of Peace and Justice.’
He settled his eyeglasses, glanced at the chairman and with-
out more ado vanished into the wings, followed by some
applause from his personal friends, interspersed with half-
hearted protests and timid catcalls.
Lefaur rose to his feet, sawing the air with his arms in an
appeal for silence. Under the impression he was about to make
a speech, the audience calmed down for a moment. He seized
the opportunity to shout :
‘Comrades, I declare the meeting ended.’
‘No !’ Jacques shouted.
But already all present had turned their backs on the stage
and were trooping out by the three exits giving on the alley.
What with the clatter of flap-seats springing up, the din of
voices raised in greeting or dispute, the noise was such that it
was impossible to make oneself heard.
Jacques was bursting with rage. It was intolerable that these
worthy people who had come here to be given a definite lead
should leave the meeting feeling all at sea, without an idea
what International Socialism expected of them.
He forced his way through the crowd to the edge of the
orchestra pit. Beyond its dark abyss lay, inaccessible, the stage.
Jacques was frothing at the mouth with rage.
‘I wish to address the meeting.’
He edged his way along the orchestra pit as far as a stage-
box, vaulted into it and ran across the corridor, where he
found a side-door leading into the wings.
At last he found himself on the empty stage, shouting, ‘I
ask to be heard !’
519
SUMMER, 1914
But his voice was drowned in a babel of other voices. In
front of him yawned the dusty, dingy auditorium, three-
quarters empty already. He ran up to the iron table and fell
to beating it frenziedly with both fists, making it reverberate
like a gong.
‘Comrades, I ask to be heard !’
Those who had not yet left the theatre — some fifty men at
most — looked round at the stage.
Some of them shouted, ‘Silence ! Let’s hear what he has to
say !’
Like a sentry sounding the alarm, Jacques went on pounding
the table. He was pale, dishevelled. Swiftly his eyes raked the
auditorium from end to end, and at the top of his voice he
shouted :
‘War! War!’
A sudden hush fell on the tumult.
‘War! War is at our gates. Within twenty-four hours all
Europe may be plunged into a terrible war. You want to hear
the truth? Well, you shall have it. Before a month is over you
who stand before me, every one of you, may be lying dead on
the battlefield.’
Furiously he thrust back a lock of hair that had fallen over
his left eye.
‘Tom don’t want a war, do you? Well, they want it. And
they’ll force it on you. You’ll bear the brunt of it, but you’ll
bear the blame for it as well. For, if you choose, you can stop
this war. ... I can see what you’re thinking. Each of you
is asking himself: What’s to be done? And that’s why you’ve
come here to-night. Well, I’ve an answer for you. There is
something to be done. There’s still a way to save the situation.
One way only. For all of us to band together like one man —
and to say, “No !” ’
More calmly, strangely self-possessed, forcing his voice,
rapping out each word so as to make sure of being heard, he
went on after a moment’s pause :
‘They say to you : “What makes war possible is capitalism,
competition between imperialist powers, high finance, the
armament-manufacturers.” And it’s all quite true. Only — stop
520
THURSDAY, JULY 3O
and think! What is war really? Is it only a conflict of interests?
Unhappily, no I It’s a conflict of living men, of flesh and blood.
War means nations under arms, butchering each other. And
all the statesmen, bankers, high financiers and armament-
manufacturers in the world couldn’t start a war, if the peoples
of all nations refused to let themselves be mobilized, refused
to fight. Guns and rifles don’t go off of their own accord.
Soldiers are needed to make a war. And who are these soldiers
on whom capitalists rely to carry out their money-making
schemes, at the cost of their lives? Who but ourselves, the rank
and file? No legal authority, no mobilization order can have
the least effect unless we choose to submit to it. We hold the
trump cards, we are the masters of our fate — for we are the
greatest number, and the greatest power on earth.’
Something seemed to snap in his head, the walls seemed
tottering around him. He had just had a sudden, shattering
intuition of his responsibility. Had he been right to launch into
this speech? Could he be sure the truth was in his message to
these people? And, for a while he felt himself floundering
helplessly in a fog of doubts, of black despondency.
Just then there was a stir at the back of the auditorium,
where the late-goers who had been on their way towards the
exits had changed their minds and were now slowly drifting
back towards the stalls, like iron filings drawn by a magnet. And
in a flash the cloud of doubt had lifted, dissolved into bright
air. Once again all that he believed, all he meant to tell these
men whose mute inquiry rose insistently towards him, seemed
clear, indisputable.
He took a step towards the footlights and, leaning forward,
cried ;
‘Don’t believe the papers ! They’re full of lies I’
‘Bravo !’ someone shouted.
‘Everywhere the newspapers are in the pay of nationalism.
To whitewash their sordid ambitions, every government main-
tains a venal horde of newspapers whose task it is to gull the
public ; to urge them into the shambles ; to convince them that
the men who fall are heroically sacrificing their lives in a holy
war, for the defence of their native soil, for the triumph of the
521
s
SUMMER, 1914
Right, of Freedom, Civilization, Justice. As if there could ever
he just wars ! As if it could be just to doom millions of innocent
victims to suffering and death !’
‘Hear! Hear!’
The three exits at the far end which opened on the blind
alley had filled with listeners, who, gradually pushed forward
by the crowd outside, were re-entering the theatre and filling
the seats.
Whispers came from the back. ‘Quiet there ! Let’s hear what
he’s saying.’
‘Will you go on allowing a handful of scoundrels to dispatch
millions of peace-loving Europeans to their death on the battle-
field? If the situation has got out of hand, it’s they who’ve
brought things to this pass. It’s never the masses who want
war ; the warmongers are always and only the governing class.
The only enemies of the masses are those who exploit them;
the people of one country aren’t enemies of the people of
another. There’s not a single German working-man who wants
to leave his wife and children and his job, just to shoulder a
gun, and shoot down French working-men.’
A ripple of approval sped through the audience. Looking
round, Jenny saw that there were two or three hundred of
them now, perhaps more, all attention to the speaker.
Jacques’ eyes ranged the seething mass, silent yet buzzing
like a hornets’ nest. Their faces showed as mere blurs of white
beyond the footlights, but each face radiated an appeal, con-
ferring on him a terrific importance — unmerited, he knew, yet
strangely quickening his hopes, his faith. He had just time to
think, ‘Jenny’s listening,’ before taking a deep breath, a new
draught of enthusiasm.
‘Are we going to stay with folded arms, waiting like sheep
till they dispatch us to the slaughter-house? Are we to trust
the various Governments with their fine talk about their
desire for peace? Who are the people who’ve plunged Europe
into the hopeless muddle it’s in to-day? Can we be mad enough
to hope that these same men — statesmen, premiers, monarchs,
and the rest of them — who by their plotting and scheming
have brought us to the brink of disaster, will now succeed, by
522
THURSDAY, JULY 30
their precious conferences, in preserving peace — this peace that
they’ve cold-bloodedly imperilled? No! It’s too late in the day
to expect the Governments to preserve the cause of peace. The
issue, peace or war, is in the hands of the masses. In our hands
and no others !’
Jacques was interrupted by another burst of cheers. He
mopped his brow, and for ten seconds stood still, panting like
a sprinter getting back his wind. He was conscious of his
power ; he seemed to feel each of his phrases striking home in
his hearers’ minds, and like well-aimed shells falling on a powder
magazine, releasing a mass of high-explosive thoughts accu-
mulated there.
With an impatient gesture he imposed silence.
‘ “What’s to be done?” you ask. I say: “Don’t let yourself
be ‘done!’’”
‘Hear! Hear!’
‘As isolated units, none of us can do anything. But all together,
solidly united — there’s nothing we can’t do. For don’t forget
this; the life of the country, all the factors vital to the well-
being of the nation, depend entirely on the workers. And the
masses have an all-powerful weapon. A weapon that’s irre-
sistible. And that is ... to down tools. A general strike !’
From the back of the room someone bawled :
‘Aye, and play the Fritzes’ game, and have ’em on us like
a ton o’ bricks !’
Jacques stiffened up and tried to catch the heckler’s eye.
‘Not a bit of it ! The German workers will join in with' us.
I’ve just got back from Berlin and I know. I’ve seen the Unter
den Linden demonstrations. I’ve heard them shouting for peace
under the Kaiser’s windows. The German worker’s every bit
as ready as you are to start a general strike. The one thing
that’s stopping him just now is fear of Russia. And whose fault
is that? Ours and our rulers’ : their absurd alliance with the
Czarist Government. That’s what has made the Germans more
afraid than ever of an attack by Russia. Now think! Who is
it best can calm the Germans’ apprehensions — in other words,
call a halt to Russia, warn her off a war? It’s you. . . . Yes,
we Frenchmen can do it by refusing to fight. So, by deciding
523
SUMMER, 1914
for 'a strike, we Frenchmen shall kill two birds with one stone.
Not only shall we checkmate the Czarist war-plans, but we
shall break down the barriers that prevent the German worker
from fraternizing with his French comrade. Yes, that’s the
road to peace — let Frenchmen and Germans make good their
fraternity, and defeat their Governments, by launching simul-
taneously a general strike.’
' Carried away, his hearers were about to break into applause,
but Jacques cut them short.
‘A strike,’ he cried, ‘that’s the one form of action which can
save us all. Only think what it means ! Our leaders issue their
appeal, and on the same day, at the same hour, everywhere
simultaneously, all the activities of the country come to a stand-
still. Automatically the strike order empties factories, shops
and government offices. Along the main roads strike-pickets
hold up supplies on their way to the city markets. Bread, meat
and milk are rationed by the strike committee. Water, gas and
electricity are cut off. There are no more trains, or ’buses, or
taxis. No more letters or newspapers. No more telegrams or
telephone-calls. Every cog-wheel of the machine has stopped
with a jerk. The streets are full of panic-stricken crowds drifting
to and fro. But there are no riots, no street-fights. Only silence
and consternation. What could the Government do against
that? What chance would they have of stemming such an
onslaught with the police and a few thousand volunteers? How
could they collect supplies at such short notice or have them
distributed to the population? Why, they couldn’t even feed
their own policemen and troops ! Even the supporters of their
nationalist pretensions would turn against them — and there’d
be nothing left them but to capitulate. How many days — no,
not days : how many hours — could they hold out against such
a deadlock, a total stoppage of every social service? And, faced
with such a demonstration of the power of the masses, what
statesman would ever dare again even to contemplate a war?
What Government would dare to issue guns and ammunition
to a nation in revolt against it?’
Each phrase he uttered was greeted by a wild burst of cheers.
As he mastered all his strength to dominate the uproar, Jenny
524
THURSDAY, JULY 30
could see his face grow crimson, his jaws quivering, the veins
and muscles of his neck standing out like whipcord.
‘The hour is critical, but we still have the last word. The
weapon in our hands is so tremendous that I don’t really think
we’d need to use it. The mere threat of a strike — once the
Government was convinced that the whole working class with-
out exception was determined to resort to it — would be enough
to give a new turn to the policy which has brought us to the
brink of the abyss. You ask, my friends : What is our duty?
Well, it’s simple, and it’s clear. We must have one aim only:
peace. We must drop party differences and unite. Unite in
saying “No !”, and fighting against war. We must rally round
the leaders of the International, and bid them spare no pains
to organize the general strike, the mass attack of the forces
of the proletariat, on which hangs the fate of France, the
destiny of Europe.’
He stopped abruptly. He felt suddenly empty, voided of his
substance.
Jenny could not take her eyes off him. She saw his eyelashes
flutter, saw him raise his arm and wave his hand. A wan smile
hovered on his face, lit by the footlights. Like a drunk man,
he swung round clumsily, vanished into the wings.
The crowd gave tongue at last.
‘Good for you ! Bravo ! No war ! A general strike ! We Want
Peace !’
The applause continued for several minutes ; the audience
remained standing in their places, clapping lustily, clamouring
for the speaker to come back.
At last, as he showed no sign of returning, there was a general
stampede towards the exits.
As for the speaker, he had collapsed in a dark corner of the
wings. Huddled on a crate behind a pile of old scenery, drip-’
ping with sweat, his blood at fever-point, he had propped his
elbows on his knees, pressing his fists to his aching eyes. His
one desire was to be left alone as long as possible; for no one
to see him in this state of abject breakdown.
It was thus that Jenny found him after some minutes’ search
under Stefany’s escort.
525
SUMMER, 1914
He looked up, and suddenly all was well with him again,
his face lit with an affectionate smile. She gazed at him intently,
without a word.
‘The next thing,’ Stefany counselled, ‘is to get away from here.’
Jacques rose to his feet.
The auditorium was empty and in darkness, and the exits
had been closed. But a glow-lamp at a corner of the stage
showed the way to a passage leading to the stage-door at the
back of the theatre. After groping their way past a coal-cellar,
they came out into a small backyard cluttered up with planks
and scaffolding. It opened on to a seemingly deserted street.
But no sooner were they in the street than a couple of men
darted forth from a dark corner.
‘Police !’ one of them said gruffly, whipping out a card from
his pocket with the deftness of a conjurer, and shoving it under
Stefany’s nose. ‘Be good enough to show me your identity
papers.’
Stefany handed the Inspector his pressman’s pass, saying:
‘I’m a journalist.’
The police officer gave it only a cursory glance. It was the
speaker who interested him.
Fortunately, in the course of the day’s peregrinations in
Jenny’s company, Jacques had looked in at Mourlan’s and
retrieved his wallet. But he had been unwise enough to keep
in his trouser-pocket the passport in the name of a Swiss student
which had served for his crossing of the German frontier. ‘Sup-
posing they search me . . . !’ he thought.
The Inspector did not, however, carry inquisition to that
point and merely examined Jacques’ personal passport under
a street-lamp. With an expert glance he compared the passport
photograph with the face before him. Then he jotted down
some notes in his notebook, moistening his pencil-tip from time
to time.
‘Where are you living?’
‘At Geneva.’
‘Where are you staying in Paris?’
Jacques hesitated for a moment. He had learnt, when
visiting Mourlan, that the room in the Rue du Jour where
526
THURSDAY, JULY 30
he put up before his trip abroad and which passed for ‘safe,’
was no longer available. He had not yet looked round for a
new abode, but he had thought of sleeping that night in the
lodging-house near the Seine where he had stayed on previous
occasions. This was the address that he now gave and the police
officer duly recorded.
The Inspector turned to Jenny, who was standing beside
Jacques. She had nothing with her except some visiting-cards
and a letter from Daniel, still in its envelope, which, it so
happened, she had left in her bag. The police-officer was quite
satisfied with these and did not even record her name in his
notebook.
‘Thank you,’ he said politely, then, touching his cap, walked
off, followed by his satellite.
‘Society has to protect itself,’ Stefany grinned ironically.
Jacques, too, smiled.
‘So I’m a “marked man” now.’
Jenny seized his arm and clung to it, her face convulsed with
alarm.
‘What are they going to do to you?’ she asked in a tremulous
voice.
‘Why — nothing !’
Stefany gave a laugh.
‘What do you expect them to do to us? We’re on the right
side of the law.’
‘There’s one thing that worries me,’ Jacques confessed. ‘It’s
having given them my address at Liebaert’s place.’
‘That’s no matter. You can move somewhere else to-morrow.’
The night was sultry ; the heat had brought out all the smells
of the squalid little street. Worn out by the day’s emotions,
Jenny clung desperately to Jacques. Suddenly she tripped over
a loose paving-block, twisted her ankle and would have fallen
had Jacques not steadied her with his arm. For a moment she
halted, leaning against the wall of a warehouse. Her foot was
hurting her.
‘Oh Jacques,’ she sighed, ‘I’m so dreadfully tired!’
‘Lean on me, dear.’
Somehow her weariness made her dearer to him than ever.
527
SUMMER, 1914
The narrow street led into a boulevard where noisy knots
of people were just beginning to disperse.
‘Sit down on this bench, both of you,’ Stefany said peremp-
torily. ‘I’ve got to hurry on or I’ll miss the last tram. There’s
a cab-rank beside the Town Hall ; I’ll send a taxi for you.’
When three minutes later a taxi drew up beside them, Jenny
felt suddenly ashamed of her weakness.
‘It’s silly of me. I could quite well have walked as far as
the tram.’ She was vexed with herself for being a drag on
Jacques’ activities, all the more so as she had always made it
a point of honour to fend off attentions on the part of others.
Yet, the moment they were in the car, she took off her hat
so as to nestle up to him more closely. Warm on her cheek
she felt his heaving breast, sonorous with the pulsing tide of
life. Without moving her head, she raised her hand and groped
for Jacques face. He smiled — she knew it when her fingers
touched his lips. Then, as if she had only wanted to make sure
he was really there, she dropped her hand and snuggled up
again into his arms.
The car slowed down. ‘So soon?’ she thought, with a stab
of regret. Then she realized her mistake; they were only at
the Porte d’Orleans, at the toll-gate.
‘Where are you staying to-night?’ she whispered.
‘Why, at Liebaert’s, of course. . . . Why?’
Words trembled on her lips, died away unspoken. He bent
over her. She closed her eyes. For a while Jacques’ lips lingered
on the fast-shut eyelids. In her ears droned a low cadence of
whispered words : ‘Darling . . . my dearest . . . my beloved.’
She felt his warm mouth slipping down her cheeks, kissing its
way towards her lips — which instinctively shrunk away. He
dared not insist and, raising his head, folded his arms still more
closely round her in a passionate embrace. And then, of her
own will, she proffered her lips to his mouth’s kiss. But he did
not notice, he had straightened up ; gently unlocking his
embrace, he reached towards the door. She realized then that
the car had stopped. Looking out, she saw the familiar door-
way. . . . How long had they been there? she wondered.
Jacques alighted first and helped her out. While he paid the
528
FRIDAY JULY 3I
driver she moved mechanically, like a sleepwalker, towards the
door, laid her hand on the bell. Suddenly a mad temptation
sped through her mind. . . . But her mother might be back.
And, with the thought of Mme. de Fontanin something inside
her seemed to snap, and all the old anxieties were back again
Trembling, her fingers groped again for the bell-push.
When Jacques rejoined her, the door stood ajar and the
lights were turned on in the vestibule.
‘To-morrow?’ he asked hurriedly.
She nodded. She could not utter a word. He had taken her
hand and was fondling it between his palms.
‘Not in the morning.’ His voice came in jerks. ‘I’ll come at
two in the afternoon. That suit you?’
Again she nodded. Then withdrew her hand and pushed
the door open.
He watched her moving stiffly across the zone of light, and
vanish into the dark beyond without once looking back. And
then he let the door swing to.
35
Friday^ July
PARIS FACES UP TO WAR
J A c qu E s had had a wretched night at Liebaert’s. After tossing
and turning on the narrow iron bedstead, after wondering time
and again if the pale light glimmering on the panes were not
a hint of daybreak, he had sunk into a sort of coma that had
lasted two Jiours and left him wearier than ever, aching in
every h'mb. ... At last the dawn had come.
After dressing he packed his few belongings in his valise,
529
SUMMER, 1914
making a separate package of his private papers. Then he drew
the chair to the window and remained there for some time,
his elbows propped on the sill, unable to fix his mind on any-
thing. The picture of Jenny came and went before his eyes
and all his being yearned to have her sitting beside him now,
silent, unmoving, cheek to cheek, as in the taxi on the previous
night. No sooner was she out of reach than he seemed to have
such hosts of things to tell her !
He watched the signs of morning life invade the street and
river-bank below; milkmen and scavengers going about their
tasks. Refuse-bins still lined the edges of the pavements. In a
corner house facing him the shutters were still closed, except
on the second floor, which was occupied by a china-shop;
across the windows he could see masses of miscellaneous
crockery half swathed in straw: porcelain vases, sweetmeat jars,
mis-assorted dinner sets, statuettes of dancing girls and busts
of eminent men. On the ground floor the premises of a Jewish
butcher flaunted a gilt shopsign lettered in Hebrew, which held
his interest for a desultory moment.
As soon as it had struck seven and he could pay his bill for
the night’s lodging, he made his escape. His first act was to
buy the morning papers and settle down to read them on a
bench beside the Seine. There was a trace of coolness in the
air ; beyond the river white trails of morning mist were floating
round Notre-Dame.
Over and over again, with sickening, insatiable avidity, he
read the latest dispatches and 'the comments on them, identical
in all the papers like the reflections in a labyrinth of mirrors.
For now at last the entire French press was unanimous in
sounding the alarm. Clemenceau’s article in UHomme Libre
was headed : ‘On the Brink of the Abyss.’
Most republican newspapers joined with those of the Right
in rebuking the French Socialists for having ‘at such a moment
as the present’ promoted the organization of an International
Peace Congress in Paris.
Jacques felt strangely reluctant to leave the seat beside the
river and broach the activities of the new day : Friday, July 31st.
Yet his perusal of the papers had gradually won him from his
530
FRIDAY, JULY 31
lethargy, braced him for contact with the outside world. He
had a momentary impulse to hasten forthwith to Jenny, but
fought it down. For he realized this impulse was due less to
his love for Jenny than a desire to shirk the claims of life ; and
he blushed for himself. War was not inevitable, all was not yet
lost, much could still be done. In every Paris district at this
hour men were awakening, eager to fight the good fight. . . .
And, in any case, he reminded himself, he had warned Jenny
that he could not see her before two.
It was much too early to go to the Humaniti office ; but not
too early for V Etendard. It struck him, too, that he could leave
his valise with Mourlan.
The prospect of calling on the old printer brought him to
his feet. He decided to go to the Bastille on foot, along the
river bank; he was beginning to feel fitter already, and the
walk would give him a final fillip.
At the Etendard premises the door was shut. ‘I’ll come back
later,’ he thought. Meanwhile he might look up Vidal, who
kept a bookshop in the Faubourg Saint- Antoine. The back
room of his shop was the meeting-place of the group of intel-
lectuals who edited the Elan Rouge, a periodical of anarchist
leanings to which Jacques had contributed reviews of Swiss
and German books.
Vidal was sitting by the window, in his short-sleeves, tying
up parcels containing pamphlets. He was alone.
‘No one turned up yet?’ Jacques asked.
‘Not a bloody one of ’em.’
Jacques was struck by the rancour in his voice.
‘Why? Is it too early?’
Vidal sniffed.
‘There wasn’t many of ’em showed up yesterday, either.
Looks as if they wanted to lie low j’ust now. . . . Ever read
that?’ he added, pointing to a book several copies of which
lay on the table.
‘Yes.’ It was Kropotkin’s Spirit of Revolt.
‘Great stuff!’ said Vidal.
‘Have the police been searching people’s houses?’ Jacques
asked.
531
SUMMER, 1914
‘I’m told so. They’ve not been here; not so far. But every-
thing’s set. Let ’em come if they want to. Sit down.’
‘No, I can see you’re busy. I’ll call in again, later.’
As he stepped out on to the pavement a police officer accosted
him.
‘Your identity papers, please.’
Jacques noticed three men watching the scene from a dis-
tance of some twenty yards — plain-clothes detectives he in-
ferred from their demeanour. The policeman examined his
passport, and handed it back to him without a word, touching
his cap-peak politely.
Lighting a cigarette, Jacques walked leisurely away, but he
was feeling uneasy. ‘That’s twice it’s happened within twenty-
four hours,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Really we might be under
martial law!’ He took some steps down a side-street to see if
he was being followed. ‘No, they haven’t done me that honour.’
It struck him that, while he was in these parts, he might
drop in at the ‘Modern Bar’ in the Rue TraversRre, the head-
quarters of a particularly active socialist group, that of the
Illrd Paris Arrondissement. The treasurer of the group, one
Bonfils, was an old schoolmate of Perinet’s.
‘Bonfils?’ the barman replied. ‘I ain’t set eyes on him the
last three days. As a matter of fact, no one’s been round this
morning, either.’
Just then a man of about thirty with a saw slung across his
back entered the cafe, wheeling his bicycle.
‘Morning, Ernest. Bonfils around?’
‘No.’
‘Any of the mates?’
‘Nary a one.’
‘Ah! Any news?’
‘No.’
‘You’re still waiting for orders from the Committee, eh?’
‘Yes.’
The carpenter fell silent and gloomed perplexedly around
the cafe, opening and shutting his mouth like a stranded fish,
as he flicked the cigarette dangling from his mouth from one
lip to the other.
532
FRIDAY, JULY 3 I
‘It’s mighty awkward,’ he said at last. ‘They didn’t ought
to leave us in the dark like that. I got a mobilization order
calling me up on the first day, and I ain’t a notion what I
ought to do. What do you think about it, Ernest? Ought us
to j’oin up?’
‘No !’ Jacques cried.
‘I can’t advise you,’ Ernest said gloomily. ‘You got to decide
that for yourself, mate.’
‘It’s playing the game of the men who started the war, if
you let them rope you in,’ Jacques said.
The carpenter made as if he had not heard the remark and
turned to the barman.
‘Aye, you’re right; I must decide that for myself’ Though
he spoke in a confident tone, the man’s perplexity was obvious
and he shot a surly glance at Jacques, as if to say: ‘I don’t
want advice from you, young man. I want orders from the
Committee.’
He turned his cycle round, saying, ‘So long, mates,’ and
walked slowly out.
‘I’m getting damn’ well fed up with ’em,’ the barman
grumbled, ‘all these chaps asking me the same thing. What
the hell can I do about it? Seems that the Committee can’t
settle amongst themselves what orders to give. But what’s the
good of a Committee, I’d like to know, if they can’t give a
lead?’
Before retracing his steps to the Etendard ]2LC(\\xt% spent some
pensive minutes roaming the neighbouring by-streets, to which
their daylong animation was steadily returning. Files of hand-
carts piled with fruit and vegetables had drawn up along the
kerb. What with street-hawkers crying their wares and the
busy throng of workers and housewives all keeping to the shady
side and jostling each other on the narrow pavement, these
streets had the cheerful din and bustle of an open-air market.
He noticed that men’s underwear bulked large in the hosiers’
shop-windows and the garments displayed were singularly out
of keeping with the season : heavy flannel shirts, knitted waist-
coats, woollen socks and the like. The boot-shops flaunted
notices hastily blocked out on cards or strips of cloth. Some
533
SUMMER, 1914
— the more discreet — merely advertised ‘Shooting Boots’ or
‘Stout Walking Shoes’ ; others, more enterprising, offered ‘Hob-
nailed Boots’ or yet more frankly ‘Ammunition Boots.’ A good
many men stopped to inspect them, but did not buy. Women
with shopping bags hung on their arms pawed and prodded
the woollen garments, picked up the heavy boots and carefully
appraised them ‘on the off chance. . . .’ No one was buying
so far, but the interest shown by the public in these window
displays spoke for the universal preoccupation.
The growing scarcity of silver currency was beginning to
hamper trade. Street-hawkers, turned money-changers for the
nonce, were moving to and fro, rattling the money-boxes slung
round their waists. For a hundred-franc note they gave ninety-
five francs in cash ; the police seemed to shut their eyes to this
illicit speculation.
On the previous day the Bank of France had made an exten-
sive issue of five- and twenty-franc bank-notes ; these were being
shown round as curiosities.
‘You see! They had it all ready in advance,’ someone
observed ; the tone conveyed mistrust and rancour, tempered
with a certain admiration.
Jacques who had had nothing to eat since the previous day,
was beginning to feel exhausted. He seated himself at a table
on the terrace of a cafe in the Place de la Bastille.
From the Gare de Lyon, from the tramway terminus and
the underground station, floods of workers, come in from
the suburbs, were streaming past. Most of them halted for a
moment in the sunlit square, newspaper in hand, and cast
an anxious look around as if to make sure, before going on to
their work, that the imminence of war had not changed Paris
overnight.
The cafe was crowded with people exchanging remarks at
the top of their voices.
One man told how he had sent his wife to the town-hall to
check up on certain entries in his service-book, and seemed
gratified at being able to declare that the personnel in the
military information bureau had had to be tripled, to cope
with the rush of enquiries. Grinning, a taxi-driver displayed
534
FRIDAY, JULY 31
a magazine with pictures on the same page of the Kaiser’s
return to Berlin and Poincare’s to Paris; side by side, signifi-
cantly parallel, the pictures showed the two great men standing
on the running-boards of their respective cars and acknow-
ledging with the same martial gesture the acclamations of their
trustful peoples.
A middle-aged couple went up to the counter. With a scared
expression the woman scanned the faces of the people drinking
at it, as if pleading for a kindly, reassuring glance. Suddenly
they began speaking. The man said :
‘We come from Fontainebleau. Things are going hot and
strong down there.’
More loquacious, the woman launched into details.
‘Yesterday evening a fellow came and told the officer who
has a room on the same floor as us — he’s in the Vllth Dragoons
— to pack up his kit right away. Later on, in the middle of the
night we were woke up by the noise of horses. The cavalry
were moving out.’
‘Where to?’ asked the girl at the cash-desk.
‘No one knows. We went on to our balcony. All the folk
in town were watching at their windows, but you didn’t hear
a cheer, not a word spoken. They rode by quiet as mice, in
their field uniforms. Without the band. After them came the
transport waggons with the kit and so on. They never stopped
passing, not till it was daylight.’
‘At the Town Hall,’ the man put in, ‘they’ve posted notices
requisitioning horses, mules, carriages — even fodder.’
‘Looks mighty like trouble brewing!’ said the cash-clerk with
an interested, almost gratified air.
‘The territorial reserves have been called up already,’ some-
one remarked.
‘What? The old fellows? Tell us another!’
‘It’s gospel truth,’ said the waiter, stopping on his way to
a customer. ‘Seems they need troops right away to guard the
bridges and junctions — all the vital points as they call ’em.
Listen! My brother who’s turned forty-three and lives near
Chalons, was told to report at the station. Seems they rigged
him out with an old kepi, and a rifle, and a coupla cartridge-
535
SUMMER, 1914
pouches slung on his chest and “Off you go!” they says.
“You’re on for sentry duty at the viaduct.” And it’s no laughing
matter, let me tell you. Nobody can get near a bridge without
a permit. The orders are to shoot at sight. They say there’s
spies all over the place.’
T’ve orders to report on the second day.’ The speaker was
a house-painter in white overalls. No one had questioned him
and when he spoke he did not raise his eyes from the liqueur-
glass he was twirling between his fingers.
Another voice: ‘So’ve I.’
‘And yours truly on the third day,’ cried a fat, jovial-looking
plumber. ‘But I’m stationed at Angouleme. And before the
squareheads get that far into France . .. I’ With a mighty heave
he slung the tool-bag jangling at his side across his shoulder,
chuckling to himself ‘And anyhow, who cares a hoot one way
or t’other? Let ’em all come I There’s worse things than a spot
of active service.’
‘Duty’s duty,’ the lady at the cash desk sagely summed it
up.
Inwardly raging, Jacques clenched his fists and scanned the
faces round him. He could not believe his eyes : not a trace
was there of any violent reaction, not the least glimmer of
revolt. It seemed as if the turn of events had come as such
a surprise to all these people that their main feeling was one
of stupefaction, of having lost their bearings. Under the bravado
may have been dismay, but all were resigned, or almost so.
He rose, picked up his valise and left in haste, more than
ever eager to get in touch again with Mourlan.
He found the old printer, his hands thrust deep into the
pockets of his black overalls, stumping up and down the three
rooms of his ground floor, the communicating doors of which
stood open. He was alone. Without halting, Mourlan bawled,
‘Come in I’ and did not turn till his visitor had closed the
door.
‘Ah, it’s you, lad !’
‘Good morning. Would you mind keeping this, for me?’
Jacques said, holding up his valise : ‘There’s only some clothes
in it, unmarked. No papers, or name.’
536
FRIDAY, JULY 3 I
Mourlan nodded curtly, glaring at Jacques with harsh,
reseritful eyes.
‘Why the hell are you staying on here?’ he flung out.
Jacques stared at him, dumbfounded.
‘Don’t you realize we’re for it this time, you fathead?’
Mourlan continued. ‘And the sooner you show a clean pair
of heels the better?’
‘And it’s you of all people, you, Mourlan, who give me that
advice?’
‘Yes, it’s me !’ he growled. ‘Who else should it be?’
He brushed off some crumbs caught in his beard, thrust
his hands again into his pockets and resumed his angry pacings
to and fro.
Never had Jacques seen him so upset, his gaze so forlorn.
There was nothing for it but to wait till this black mood had
passed. Without waiting to be asked, he drew up a chair and
sat down.
After striding up and down the three rooms, like a caged
beast, for a few minutes more, Mourlan came to a stop in
front of Jacques.
‘Who are you counting on to-day. I’d like to know? On
your famous “proletariat?” On a general strike?’
‘Yes.’ Jacques’ tone was resolute.
The shoulders of the old evangelist of revolution heaved
disdainfully.
‘A general strike ! What bunkum ! Who talks of it to-day?
Who dares even to think of it?’
‘I do.’
‘What? Can’t you see that even in the herd of poor damned
fools we’re trying to save despite themselves, there’s an un-
believable majority of hotheads, fellows who’re always out for
a scrap, and get all worked up at the least provocation? You’ve
only got to tell them a couple of Germans have crossed the
frontier, and those fellows will be fairly howling to be issued
with their rifles. Take any one of ’em apart and talk to him
and you’ll generally find he’s a decent sort of cove, who says
he doesn’t wish anyone harm, and believes he means it. But
look beneath the surface and you’ll find there’s a mighty lot
537
SUMMER, 1914
of the cave-man lingering on — ^instincts he’s not proud of and
keeps mum about — only he just can’t help himself. They’re
always plaguing him and, when a chance crops up, he has
to give ’em their run. Human nature’s built that way, and
there’s nothing to be done about it. So who the hell can you
count on, if you can’t count on the men themselves? The
leaders of the European proletariat, or our charming friends,
the socialist deputies? Just see how they’re behaving now?
Backing Poincare every bloody time ! He’s only got to ask for
it and they’ll sign his precious declaration of war, blindfold !’
He turned on his heel and began striding up and down again.
‘No, no,’ Jacques muttered. ‘We’ve men like Jaurfes with us.
And abroad they’ve men of the stamp of Vandervelde and
Haase.’
‘Oh, so you’re counting on our grand Panjandrums, are
you?’ Mourlan said, bearing down on him from the far end
of the room. ‘But you saw with your own eyes how they carried
on at Brussels. Do you think that if those fellows had been
genuinely prepared to defend the cause of peace by revolu-
tionary acts, they wouldn’t have managed to come to some
agreement and given a definite line to the socialists of Europe?
No, they got their rounds of applause by slinging mud at their
Governments. And what did they do next? They dashed over
to the post-office and sent off imploring telegrams to the Kaiser
and the Czar, to Poincare and the President of the United
States and — did you ever hear the like? — to the Pope, asking
him to threaten Francis Joseph with hell fire! What’s your
friend Jaurfes doing about it now? He trots round every morn-
ing, like a well-trained little lapdog, to pluck Viviani by the
sleeve and beg his “dear friend” to “bring pressure to bear
on Russia.” No, the workers have been let down by their
leaders. Instead of giving a strong lead to the revolutionary
movement against the forces out for war, they’ve let the
nationalists have it all their own bloody way, they’ve lost
the chance of launching a revolution, they’ve let capitalism
trample on the proletariat.’
He took some strides across the room, then suddenly swung
round on Jacques.
538
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
‘And, anyhow, no one will ever get the idea out of my head
that your pal Jaur^s isn’t just playing to the gallery. In his
heart he knows as well as I do that the game is up, that to-
morrow Russia and Germany will Join in the dance, and that
Poincare will deliberately let us be dragged in, too. Because,
for one thing, he intends to fulfil the scandalous pledges he
gave at St. Petersburg, and because — .’ He broke off, went
to the door and gently opened it, to let in a grey cat followed
by her kittens. ‘Come in, pussy ! Come in ! . . . And because
he’s itching to play the hero and win back Alsace and Lorraine
for France.’
He had gone up to the set of shelves stacked with books and
pamphlets which occupied the space between the windows.
Taking out a book, he gave it some gentle slaps, like a fancier
patting a horse’s neck.
‘See here, lad,’ he went on in a calmer tone, as he put the
book back in its place. ‘I don’t want to blow my own trumpet,
but I wasn’t far wrong when, after their Basel Congress, I
wrote that book to prove to them that their famous “Inter-
national” was based on a misconception. Jaures told me off
for it. So did all the others. But to-day there’s no getting away
from the facts. It was folly to hope to reconcile socialist inter-
nationalism — ours, the real thing — with the nationalist govern-
ments that still have all the power, everywhere. To hope to
put up a fight, to hope to win, by law-abiding methods only,
by merely “bringing pressure to bear” on Governments and
limiting our tactics to fine speeches in parliament — was sheer
blithering idiocy. Nine out of ten of our famous revolutionary
leaders — shall I tell you what I really think about them?
They’ll never be able to bring themselves to adopt “uncon-
stitutional” methods. That being so — well, the conclusion’s
unescapable. As they’ve never had the wits, or indeed the will,
to overthrow the Constitution and set vp a' socialist regime,
the only thing that’s left to them to-day is to defend it at the
point of the bayonet, once the first German soldier shows up
on the frontier. And that’s just what they’re preparing to do,
behind the scenes. . . . God ! To think I’ve lived to see this
day!’ he burst out, and, turning on his heel again, took some
539
SUMMER, 1914
angry strides towards the other end of the room. ‘You’ll see:
they’ll all turn their coats, every man jack of ’em — like Gustave
Herve. You’ve read the papers, haven’t you? “A call to arms.”
“Your country needs you.” “We will not sheathe the sword. . . .”
Et cetera. Banging the patriotic drum. . . . Forward, the
mugs’ brigade! In a week’s time, there won’t be left in France
— perhaps not in Europe — a dozen socialists, the genuine
article. Only the turncoats, socialists-in-uniform 1’
Again Mourlan swept down on Jacques, and now he laid
a hand, trembling with emotion, on Jacques’ shoulder.
‘That’s why I’m telling you, lad, take old Mourlan’s tip and
— vamoose! Don’t hang about here. Get back to Switzerland.
Maybe there’s still something for chaps like you to do in
Switzerland. But here we’re scuttled — down and out !’
Jacques parted with Mourlan in a mood of despondency
that, try as he would, he could not shake off. In quest of con-
solation he hurried to the Humanite office.
But Stefany and Gallot were in conference with the Skipper.
Cadieux, hurrying from one office to another, shouted to him
as he dashed past that Jaures had just had an interview with
two members of the Government, Malvy and Abel Ferry, and
returned with the news that there were still good grounds for hope.
No sooner had Jacques left him than he ran into young
Pag^s, Gallot’s second-in-command, who took a very pessi-
mistic view. Military preparations were, it seemed, being
speeded up in Russia; the rumour that the Czar had secretly
signed on the previous day the Ukase for general mobilization
was being confirmed on every hand.
At the ‘Croissant,’ where Jacques looked in for a moment
only, he saw no one he knew except old ‘Ma’ Ury who seemed
to be acting as chairwoman at a feminist gathering taking place
in a corner of the cafe. Hatless, perched uneasily on the
leatherette-upholstered wall-sofa, which was much too high
for her stumpy legs, she was holding forth, surrounded by a
group of female militants roped in, presumably, to hear her
latest gospel. Round the fanatical old face fluttered an aureole
of wispy grey hair. Jacques made as if he had not seen her,
and left immediately.
540
FRIDAY, JULY 31
At the ‘Progr^s’ in the Rue du Sentier several people had
collected already in the ground-floor room. Across a haze of
tobacco-smoke Jacques recognized the faces of Rabbe, Jumelin,
Berthet and a new-comer from Nancy, the secretary of the
Meurthe-et-Moselle Trades Union Federation, who had
reached Paris that morning, bringing the latest news from
Eastern France.
A German socialist with whom he had travelled up had
assured him that a Council of War had been held the previous
evening in Berlin. It had been decided to convene the Federal
Council. The opinion was that ‘very grave decisions’ would be
come to in the course of the day. Bridges on the Moselle were
occupied by German troops. Any incident might start a con-
flagration. Already on the previous day a troop of German
light cavalry had — by way it almost seemed of wanton pro-
vocation — crossed the frontier near Luneville and galloped over
several hundred yards of French territory.
‘At Luneville, you say?’ Jacques’ thoughts swerved abruptly
towards Daniel — to Jenny.
Thereafter he listened only with half an ear. The man from
Nancy was telling how during the last few nights people had
seen passing on all the eastern railway-lines endless trains of
empty carriages on their way to reserve depots in the vicinity
of Paris.
Sick at heart, Jacques held his peace; a vision, starkly
realistic, held his mind, of Europe slipping downhill towards
the abyss. At this stage nothing short of a miracle could bring
about a salutary revulsion of opinion, and brace the peoples’
will to swift, unanimous resistance.
Suddenly a desire to see his brother again came over him.
They had not met during the whole of the week. It was lunch-
time; Antoine was sure to be at home. And, he told himself,
this interlude would while away the time till his appoint-
ment with Jenny.
541
SUMMER, 1914
36
Friday^ July
A LUNCHEON-PARTY AT ANTOINE’s FLAT
‘Have you heard, sir, there’s going to be a war?’ Leon asked.
Impossible to say if he was laughing up his sleeve ; the tone
was mildly interrogative, as was the expression of the man’s
goggle eyes, but there was a hint of slyness in the set of his
underlip. Without waiting for a reply, he added: ‘I’m called
up for the fourth day. But I’ve always been a batman.’
They heard the clang of the lift-door on the landing outside.
‘The Doctor’s come, sir,’ Leon said, going to open the door.
Antoine shepherded into the flat a little bespectacled, grey-
haured man in an alpaca coat, whom Jacques recognized as
M. Chasle, sometime his father’s secretary.
M. Chasle gave a start on seeing Jacques. Whenever he met
anyone he knew, he brought his hand up to his mouth, as if
to stifle an exclamation of astonishment.
‘Ah, so it’s you?’
Antoine shook his brother’s hand absent-mindedly, evincing
no surprise at finding him there.
‘Monsieur Chasle was waiting for me in the street. I’ve per-
suaded him to come to lunch with us.’
‘Just for once in a way,’ demurely chirped the little man.
After telling Leon to serve lunch, Antoine took M. Chasle
and Jacques to his consulting-room where Studler, Roy and
Jousselin were awaiting him. Chairs and tables were strewn
with newspapers.
‘I’m a bit late,’ Antoine said, ‘as I had to call at the Foreign
Office on my way back from hospital.’
A silence followed, all eyes gloomily intent on Antoine.
‘Well?’ Studler said at last.
‘Things look bad,’ Antoine said laconically. ‘Damned bad,
in fact.’ An expression of gloom settled on his face. Then, more
briskly : ‘Well, let’s have some lunch.’
542
FRIDAY, JULY 31
The meal began in absolute silence, as if the process of eating
the first course — boiled eggs — called for their utmost concen-
tration.
Suddenly Antoine spoke, without looking up from his plate.
‘From what Rumelles tells me, we’ve good reason to hope
that England’s coming in with us. Anyhow, not against us.’
‘In that case,’ Studler asked, ‘why doesn’t England buck up
and say so? That might save the situation yet.’
Jacques’ indignation got the better of him.
‘Obviously because it’s far from certain that England wants
to “save the situation.” She’s the only country that really stands
to win something in the mad gamble of a world war.”
‘You’re quite mistaken,’ Antoine put in fretfully. ‘I hear that
none of the British statesmen want a war.’
M. Chasle, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the chair next
to Antoine’s, was listening with all his ears. Wherever he sat he
gave the impression of being perched on an office-stool. He
perked his head right and left, gazing at each speaker with
such agonized attention that he forgot to eat. These world-
wide alarums and excursions passed his understanding, and
had wrecked his nerves. What with reading the newspapers
and listening to what was said around him, he had succumbed
two days previously to a mood of blind panic, and now, at his
wits’ end, he had come to Antoine for reassurance.
‘The British Cabinet’ — Antoine’s tone, for all its self-
assurance, rang somehow false — ‘is composed of genuinely
peace-loving men. And I’m given to understand it’s a picked
team, the best in Europe. The Foreign Minister, Sir Edward
Grey, is particularly level-headed ; Asquith and Churchill
combine honesty with shrewdness, while Haldane’s extremely
energetic and knows Europe inside out. Lloyd George’s pacifist
views are common knowledge; he’s always been against in-
tensive armaments.’
‘Yes, they’re picked men,’ M. Chasle agreed in the tone of
one announcing a deeply rooted conviction.
Jacques gazed at his brother, on the defensive, but did not speak.
‘With such men in power, there’s no fear of England’s acting
with undue precipitance,’ Antoine concluded.
543
SUMMER, 1914
Studler spoke again.
‘In that case, why has Grey been wasting the last ten days
trying to patch things up by diplomatic hocus-pocus when the
one certain way of making the Central Powers draw in their
horns was to warn them they’d have England against them
if war broke out?’
‘And that’s just what he did, so I’m told, at his interview
yesterday with the German Ambassador.’
‘Well, what came of it?’
‘Nothing’s come — so far. As a matter of fact, our Foreign
Office fears this warning came too late to take effect.’
‘Naturally!’ Studler grunted. ‘Why the devil did he wait so
long?’
‘On purpose, likely as not,’ Jacques suggested. ‘Of all the
crafty politicians who hold the reins of power in Europe, Sir
Edward is, to my mind the most . . .’
‘That’s by no means what Rumelles says,’ Antoine cut in
testily. ‘Rumelles was an attache at our London Embassy for
three years and often came in contact with Sir Edward. So
he knows what he’s talking about. And, I must say, his estimate
of the man carries conviction.’
‘That’s what makes the charm of it,’ M. Chasle muttered
inanely, as if speaking to himself.
Antoine fell silent. He had no wish to join in a discussion
or even to repeat what he had heard at the Quai d’Orsay. He
was tired out. He had spent most of the previous night docket-
ing, with Studler’s help, his files of medical observations; he
was determined, come what might, to leave his records in good
order. After the Caliph had left he had gone up to his study,
burnt old letters and sorted out his private papers. He had
snatched two hours’ sleep as dawn was breaking. No sooner
was he awake than the news in the papers had aroused in him
a state of febrile unrest which the pessimistic outlook of all
whom he had spoken to in the course of the morning and the
general atmosphere of consternation had intensified hour by
hour. Moreover his morning work at the hospital had been
particularly heavy and, when he left, he had felt completely
done in. That depressing colloquy with Rumelles had been
544
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
the last straw. His morale, till now intact, was badly shaken.
The tempest breaking over Europe was rocking the very
foundations on which he had built his life : science and human
reason. He was suddenly discovering the impotence of intellect ;
and, confronted with this uprush from the world of instinct,
the futility of the virtues which had been the mainstay of his
industrious career: common sense, moderation, wisdom and
experience, the cult of justice. He would have preferred to be
alone, with leisure to think things out, to fight down his
depression and collect his strength, in stoic preparation for the
ineluctable. But everyone was looking at him, waiting, it
seemed, for him to speak. He frowned and, summoning up all
his energy, went on.
‘This fellow Grey, I gather, is the conscientious type of Eng-
lishman, always a bit mistrustful and slow to act, and not
particularly expansive, but wholly dependable in word and
deed. Quite the opposite of what you think,’ he added, turning
to his brother.
‘I judge him by his foreign policy,’ Jacques said.
‘Rumelles has an excellent explanation for that. But it’s
complicated and I doubt if I can remember all he told me.’
Antoine gave a sigh and passed his hand across his forehead.
‘For one thing, as to fixing up a definite alliance with France,
Grey hasn’t a free hand. There are several members of the
Cabinet with pro-German leanings ; Haldane, for instance. And,
as for the British nation, everyone was far more concerned —
until the last few days — with the Irish imbroglio, than with
the consequences of the Serajevo murder. The nation would
have refused point-blank to let itself be dragged into a con-
tinental war for the defence of Servia. So, even if Grey had
felt inclined to pledge his country’s aid more explicitly and at
an earlier date, he ran the risk of being repudiated by his
colleagues, by Parliament, and by the nation at large.’
He helped himself to a glass of wine — a thing he rarely did
at luncheon — and drank it off.
‘That’s not all,’ he continued. ‘As always, there’s a psycho-
logical aspect of the problem as well. It seems probable that
Grey, from the start, fully realized that the issue — peace or war
545
T
SUMMER, 1914
— lay with the English. But he also realized that the weapon
in his hands was a double-edged one. Supposing that a week
ago the British Government had pledged itself publicly to come
to the aid of France and Russia. . . .’
‘ . . . we’d have found Berlin singing another tune,’ Studler
interjected, ‘Germany’d have climbed down, told Austria to
draw in her claws, and everything’d have been settled amicably,
after a few days’ haggling between the various governments.’
‘Possibly. But it’s far from certain. In fact it seems Grey had
good reasons for fearing just the opposite result. If Russia had
felt sure she could count not only on our army and our financial
aid, but on the British fleet and British money too, the tempta-
tion to risk a war, with such trump cards in her hand, might
well have proved irresistible.’ Antoine cast a glance at Jacques.
‘Seen from that angle, Grey’s attitude takes on a very different
aspect. We may well believe that his policy of blowing hot
and cold may have been prompted by a genuine desire to
preserve peace. He said to France : “Go slow ! Bring pressure
to bear on Russia; she may drag you into a war in which, I
tell you plainly, you can’t reckon on our help.” And at the
same time he was saying to Germany: “Take care! We don’t
approve of your truculence. Don’t forget our fleet is mobilized
in the North Sea, and we’ve made no undertaking to remain
neutral.” ’
Studler shrugged his shoulders.
‘With all his high principles, your dear friend Grey seems
to have been playing a very childish game. For Russia must
have known, through her secret service agents, the threats that
London was making to Berlin. And inevitably that encouraged
her to hope that England would come in against Germany.
And meanwhile the German secret service was reporting to
Berlin that England had given France and Russia little en-
couragement to count on British support. Which meant that
Germany had no reason to take over-seriously the warning
given her by England. Yes, that policy of “blowing hot-and-
cold” seems to have actually promoted the likelihood of a war.’
As a matter of fact Rumelles had expressed practically the
same opinions. But Antoine did not mention this. He drew
546
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
a clean-cut line between the news of a general order which
he felt justified in passing on to others, and such comments
and remarks of his statesman friend as seemed of a confidential
nature, let fall in the course of conversation. And Jacques’
presence tended to make him still more circumspect than usual.
So he resolved not to mention that the French authorities were
beginning to wonder if the time was not ripe for making a
frank and urgent appeal for British support — ^in the form, for
instance, of a personal letter from the President of the Republic
to King George.
Likewise he refrained from speaking of an incident which
had, according to Rumelles, at long last induced Sir Edward
Grey definitely to inform the German Ambassador at their
interview on the previous day that Britain would throw her
weight into the scales. The Germans, it appeared, had com-
mitted a serious blunder on the 29th by making proposals to
the British Foreign Office to this effect : Tf you will give us
a guarantee of your neutrality, we undertake, after our victory,
to seek no territorial aggrandizement at the expense of con-
tinental France ; we will merely annex her colonies.’ This out-
rageous proposition, coupled with the German refusal to
undertake to respect the neutrality of Belgium in the event
of war, had (so Rumelles said) not only roused the ire of the
Foreign Office but had effectively converted all the members
of the Cabinet to a Francophile frame of mind and led the
British Government to declare themselves unequivocally on
the Franco-Russian side.
Jacques had heard out Antoine without contradicting him,
but he did not yield.
‘All very well,’ he said. ‘But Rumelles seems too much
inclined to forget the real issues of the problem.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that ten years ago Great Britain was still the un-
challenged mistress of the seas, and that, if she doesn’t find
some way of checking at all costs the growth of the German
fleet, she may find herself one of these days playing second
fiddle to Germany. That’s a positive fact which everybody
knows, and which I can’t help thinking throws much more
547
SUMMER, 1914
light on the situation than all Rumelles’ theories about Grey’s
“psychology,” his shilly-shallying and scruples.’
Studler nodded approval. ‘And one wonders how far that
business of the Baghdad Railway hasn’t influenced British
policy. It means that Germany’s got hold of the line linking
up Constantinople with the Persian Gulf — the railway that
leads straight to India and may compete disastrously with the
Suez canal.’
‘And what exactly does all that prove?’ Roy asked with
seeming casualness.
‘What indeed?’ echoed M. Chasle.
‘It proves,’ Jacques said, ‘that England has very strong
reasons for wanting a war that will cripple Germany. To my
mind, that explains everything.’
‘Those English had a bit of trouble one fine day with Bona-
parte, didn’t they?’ said M. Chasle with a knowing air. And
added with a quiet chuckle : ‘But of course there’ll never be
a “stratagem” like Napoleon on the German side. What?’
During the pause that followed, glints of discreetly veiled
amusement twinkled in all eyes but M. Chasle’s.
Then Jousselin turned to Jacques.
‘All the same, don’t you think we can trust the English
statesmen when they say they’re out for peace?’
‘No, I don’t. The Kaiser’s famous remark about Germany’s
future being “on the water,” was a definite challenge to Eng-
land. And, in my opinion, England is taking up the challenge
at this moment. She’s grasping at the chance of crushing the
one European nation that stands in her way. I believe that
Grey was well aware of Russia’s intentions and had no illusions
as to the futility of his repeated offers of mediation. I believe
he has been consistently throwing dust in our eyes, and that
in actual fact the British Government has come to look on
everything that makes this war inevitable as so much to the
good. For it’s a war that England needs', though she has never
yet dared, and perhaps would never have dared, left to herself,
to start it.’
He looked towards his brother. Antoine was peeling an apple
and seemed determined to stand out of the discussion.
548
FRIDAY, JULY 3 I
‘Already, in 191 1,’ Studler remarked, fixing his eyes on Roy,
‘England did everything she could — without showing her hand
too openly — to embroil France with Germany over Morocco.
But for Caillaux . .
Jacques, too, had turned towards Roy, who was sitting at
the far end of the big dining-table. At the mention of Caillaux
he had looked up abruptly and Jacques caught a sudden flash
of the young keen teeth.
Just then Jousselin, who for some minutes had seemed lost
in musings, began speaking. A little pile of green almonds lay
on his plate; he had been shelling them methodically, im-
paling them one by one on his fork and neatly paring off the
husks with his knife. Now laying down knife and fork, he sent
his mild gaze roaming around the table.
‘Do you know how I think historians of the years to come
will describe the phase of history through which we’re passing?
They’ll say: “One summer’s day in July, 1914, suddenly a
conflagration broke out in the heart of Europe. It started in
Austria, where the fire-raisers had laid their train with skill
and foresight.” ’
‘But,’ Studler interrupted, ‘the spark that set it ablaze came
from Servia. Driven by a treacherous North-East wind blowing
straight from St. Petersburg.’
‘And the Russians,’ Jousselin continued, ‘promptly fanned
the fire.’
‘With France inexplicably approving them,’ Jacques added.
‘And, acting in concert, they flung on to the fire nice little
bundles of dry faggots that they’d stored up years before, for
the occasion,’
‘What about Germany?’ Jousselin asked. As all were silent,
he continued. ‘Germany, meanwhile, stood pat, watching the
flames ro 4 r up, sparks flying in all directions. . . . Why? Out
of cunning?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ cried Studler.
‘No,’ Jacques put in. ‘Out of stupidity, perhaps, and pride.
Because she was mad enough to believe that, whenever she
thought fit, she could stop the spread of the conflagration, call
off disaster.*
549
SUMMER, 1914
‘And rake some nice roast chestnuts out of the fire,’ Roy
added.
‘Such things,’ M. Chasle murmured dolefully, ‘shouldn’t be
allowed.’
‘We’ve not dealt with England yet!’ Jousselin reminded
them.
‘Oh, England I’ Jacques exclaimed. ‘Her part strikes me as
very obvious. From the start she had ample supplies of water;
quite enough to put the fire out. And — what makes her con-
duct blacker — she clearly saw the fire catch, and spreading.
But she contented herself with shouting ‘Fire! Fire!’ and took
good care not to open her sluice-gates. A fact which, for all
the pacifist airs and graces she affects, will go heavily against
her at the bar of posterity. She’ll surely be adjudged an aider
and abettor of the fire-raisers.’
Bending above his plate, Antoine did not seem to be listening.
The Caliph rolled his large, liquid eyes on Jacques.
‘There’s one point on which I can’t agree with you, and
that’s the German attitude to-day.’ His voice had suddenly
assumed a brittle, nervous quality as though he failed to master
some secret discomposure. ‘I believe Germany wants a war,’
‘Why, of course!’ Roy exclaimed. ‘Germany’s taken over,
lock, stock and barrel, the ambitions of Charles the Fifth, the
programme of Napoleon. The Seven Years’ War, Sadowa, the
campaign of 1870, were stepping-stones on the way to German
supremacy in Europe. And every spell of peace was used by
Germany for piling up armaments so as to realize the sooner
her dream of dominating Europe.’
Studler who had heard out Roy’s tirade with lowered eyes,
turned again to Jacques.
‘Yes, I’m certain Germany is deliberately following up a
well-thought-out plan. From the outset hers was the “hidden
hand” that pulled the strings and directed every move of
Austria’s.’
Jacques made as if to speak, but the Caliph, who seemed the
prey of an unwonted agitation, gave him no time, and almost
shouted :
‘Only think! It stares you in the eye! Would Austria, old
550
FRIDAY, JULY 31
ramshackle Austria, ever have dared, left to herself, to adopt
such a tone, to bluff and bully? Would she have dared to defy
all the Great Powers by refusing reasonable time for the Servian
reply? Or to rej’ect so conciliatory a reply without a vestige
of deliberation? Why, it’s absurd ! If you assume Germany had
no warlike intent at the back of her mind, how do you account
for her systematic hostility to every proposal — sincere or not —
anyhow diplomatically acceptable — made by England? Or her
refusal to refer the issue to the Hague Tribunal, as the Czar
suggested?’
‘Still,’ Jacques put in, ‘Germany’s conduct can be j'ustified
to a large extent. She was well aware of the warlike intentions
of Russian Pan-Slavism. And she maintained throughout that,
for this reason, any meddling by the Powers in the Austro-
Servian dispute involved more risks than if they elected to
stand out.’
Antoine dissented vigorously.
‘At the Quai d’Orsay they’ve never trusted Germany’s
pacific declarations. They’ve long since taken it for a moral
certainty. . . .’
‘A moral certainty !’ Jacques echoed scornfully.
‘. . . that the Central Powers have made their minds up
to turn down anything that might prevent, or even postpone,
a war.’
All this political table-talk was getting on Antoine’s nerves;
to end it, he put down his napkin, and rose.
His guests followed suit.
‘Don’t let’s forget,’ Jacques said to Studler as they slowly
filed out of the dining-room, ‘that Germany made several
conciliatory moves, and the French and Russian Governments
would not even entertain them.’
‘Mere eyewash — those conciliatory moves ! After all, Ger-
many couldn’t afford to disdain European opinion altogether.’
‘Still, in fairness,’ Jousselin pointed out, ‘you must admit that
Germany’s proposals — urging the necessity of a punitive expe-
dition against Servia and strict localization of the conflict —
by no means indicated any desire to start a European war.
And still less a war against us.’
551
SUMMER, 1914
‘Not to mention,’ Jacques added, ‘that if Germany’d really
had that desire for war, and for crushing France, why should
she have waited so long? During the last fifteen years she had
any number of opportunities, far more favourable than the
present one — why did she let them all slip past? Why didn’t
she take advantage of the Franco-British tension over the
Fashoda incident in 1898? Or the Russo-Japanese war in 1905?
Or the Bosnian annexations in 1908? Or the Agadir incident in
1911?’
‘All that’s neither here nor there !’ the Caliph declared
obstinately, thrusting his hands into his pockets. ‘Neither here
nor there, I tell you !’
In the doorway, M. Chasle was nibbling a hunk of bread,
hopping aside as each of the others left the room. To Antoine
he showed the piece of bread, with a twinkle in his eye.
‘That was one of my old dad’s crotchets ; with his dessert
he’d got to have his little snack of bread. I take after him.
Monsieur Antoine. It’s my bonne bouche, as they say.’ His smile,
which seemed to deprecate such childish self-indulgence, con-
veyed also a hint of pride in so singular a propensity. M. Chasle
was much too natural to be modest. . . .
As Jacques and Jousselin were entering the consulting-room,
where coffee awaited them, Studler slipped between them,
gripped their arms, then burst out again, but in a confidential,
tremulous tone.
‘ “Neither here nor there,” I said, because one can go on
arguing till the crack of doom, and finding a reason for every-
thing. “Neither here nor there” because we all must believe
that Germany’s guilty and we’ve been bluffed. Personally, each
time I pick up a paper these days, the thing I look for first —
I’m only too aware of it — is some further proof of German
double-dealing.’
‘But why?’ Jousselin asked, coming to a stop just inside the
door.
The Caliph looked down.
‘So as to be able to face what’s coming to us all. Because,
if we began to question the guilt of Germany, it would be too
hard to do what they call “our duty.” ’
552
FRIDAY, JULY 3 I
Jacques could not repress a wry smile.
‘Our duty as good patriots?’
‘Yes,’ Studler said.
‘And you can still take it seriously, this duty that they rant
about — even when you see all that they’re foisting on us in
its name?’
The Caliph shook his shoulders furiously as though trying
to extricate them from the meshes of a net.
‘Oh damn it !’ He sounded at once irate and plaintive. ‘Don’t
make things harder for me. We all know that if the worst
came to the worst and France were to go to war to-morrow,
we wouldn’t shirk our duty, whatever our private opinions were.’
Jacques’ mouth opened. He was on the point of crying ‘/
would!’ when he noticed his brother gazing fixedly at him
from the middle of the room. And the cry froze on his lips;
the strangely imploring look he read in Antoine’s eyes arrested
his impulse to speak out. Ever since Antoine’s arrival, Jacques
had been painfully conscious that, under the surface, Antoine’s
nerves were frayed to the breaking-point. And he was as pro-
foundly moved as he had been at the bedside of his dying father
when he had seen his elder brother, whom he had thought
so imperturbable, break down, sobbing like a child.
Antoine looked away.
‘Manuel, old chap,’ he said, ‘will you pour out our coffee,
please?’
‘What’s more,’ the Caliph went on with ever-increasing
vehemence, ‘I say to myself: “Who can tell? A European war
on the grand scale would very likely do more to bring about
the triumph of socialism than twenty years of peace-time
propaganda.” ’
‘There,’ Jousselin replied, ‘I really cannot follow you. I know
that some of your theorists assert that a war is needed to usher
in the revolution. But I’ve always regarded that view as — to
use the understatement old Philip is so fond of — “one way of
looking at it.” Those who hold it can have no idea of what
a “nation under arms,” the mobilization of a whole people,
means to-day. What a curious kink they must have in their
minds to imagine that a movement of revolt which hasn’t yet
553 T*
SUMMER, 1914
been able to make good under our easy-going democratic
system, should suddenly become feasible when all the revolu-
tionaries have been clapped into uniform and are at the mercy
of a military clique with powers of life and death over every
one of them!’
His eyes riveted on Jacques, Studler had not heard a
word.
‘A war,’ he muttered. ‘What exactly would it mean? Three
or four hellish months, I suppose. . . . But, after that, why
shouldn’t the working-classes of the nations come out of their
ordeal proved by the fire, welded into a stabler union? And
supposing it really meant an end of imperialism and armament
races, and at last the peoples of the earth settled down to an
enduring peace, based on the International?’
Jacques shook his head, unconvinced.
‘No, I’ve no use for that hypothetical Utopia you speak of,
if it’s to cost a war. Anything’s better than having to see justice
and reason demolished by brute force and butchery. Anything
rather than the madness, the horrors of a war 1’
Roy, who had been listening, put in a remark.
'Anything, you say? Do you include the occupation of France
by a hostile army? In that case, why not offer right away to
the Germans, for our peace’ sake, the Meuse district, and the
Ardennes? Why not give them the North of France and control
of the Straits of Dover, while you’re about it? They’d welcome
another outlet on the sea.’
Jacques’ shoulders lifted slightly.
‘The big business interests in the North would suffer, I admit.
But do you really think that the greater part of the workers
and miners would find their lot substantially worse than it is
now? Or that, if their opinion were taken, most of them
wouldn’t prefer even that to dying gloriously on the battle-
field?’ His eyes were glowing with serene courage. ‘I know
your theory that war and peace must alternate in the life of
nations, like the movement of a pendulum. A monstrous
theory! We’ve got to stop that pendulum for good and all.
Humanity must somehow be got out of this fatal rhythm and
be allowed to devote its energies to building up a better social
554
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
order. War doesn’t solve a single one of man’s vital problems.
It only makes the worker’s plight worse than before. During
a war he’s mere cannon-fodder; and afterwards more cruelly
enslaved than ever. That’s all war means for him.’ In a lower
voice he added: ‘It’s quite simple: I see nothing, literally
nothing, that could be worse for a nation than a war and all
that it involves.’
‘Quite simple,’ Roy retorted drily. ‘And even a little over-
simplified, if you’ll permit me to say so. As if a nation had
nothing to gain by a successful war !’
‘Nothing! Under any circumstances whatever!’
Antoine’s voice rang out authoritatively.
‘That’s unmaintainable !’
Jacques looked round with a start. Till now, seated at his
desk, with lowered eyes, Antoine had seemed absorbed in the
perusal of his morning mail. In point of fact he had not missed
a word of what was being said a few yards from him. Without
getting up or looking at his brother, he went on.
‘Historically unmaintainable. All history — beginning with
Joan of Arc. . . .’
‘I wonder !’Jousselin put in lightly. ‘Who knows? If it hadn’t
been for the Maid, perhaps France and England would have
become united into a single kingdom. To the demerit of
Charles VII, I grant. But perhaps to the great advantage
of the two nations, which would have been spared no end of
unpleasant happenings.’
‘No, Jousselin,’ Antoine exf>ostulated, ‘do let’s talk seriously.
. . . Would you deny, for instance, that Germany gained
anything at Sadowa, and Sedan?’
‘Germany,’ Jacques retorted, ‘as a nation, as a figurehead —
yes. But what about the German people? What did the man
in the street gain by those “glorious victories?” ’
Roy stiffened up.
‘And supposing by next Easter — Easter, 1915 — France has
reconquered Alsace and Lorraine, extended her frontier to
the Rhine, annexed the mines of the Saar basin, and added
the German colonies in Africa to her empire; supposing that,
by force of arms, she has become the greatest Power on the
555
SUMMER, 1914
Continent, will anyone dare to say that France has gained
nothing by the sacrifice of her sons?’
He gave a good-humoured laugh and, obviously supposing
he had said the last, irrefutable word, took out his cigarette-
case, and drawing a chair towards him, perched himself
astride it.
‘I’m afraid it’s not so simple as all that,’ Jousselin, who was
standing beside Jacques, remarked in a low, brooding voice.
Jacques turned to him, and he, too, lowered his voice.
‘No, I won’t condone the use of violence — even in self-
defence. I won’t leave any loophole open in my mind to any
thought whatever that can lure me into violence. I won’t take
part in any war, whether they label it “just” or “unjust”;
whatever its origins and motives.’
He stopped abruptly, breathless with emotion. And inwardly
added, ‘Not even in a civil war,’ as he recalled the heated
discussions he had had with Mithoerg and his like, revolu-
tionaries who drew the line at nothing. To such men he would
say : ‘It’s not to an orgy of blood and hatred that I wish to
owe the triumph of the cause on which my heart is set, the
cause of human brotherhood.’
37
Friday^ July ji
JACQ,UES AND ANTOINE DEFINE THEIR RESPECTIVE ATTITUDES
TOWARDS NATIONAL SERVICE
‘It’s not so simple as all that,’ Jousselin repeated, sweeping
the others’ faces with his slow, mild gaze; then relapsed into
silence. After a while, as though his thoughts had taken a new
turning, he added in a different tone :
556
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
‘Of course we doctors are privileged in a sense ; we shouldn’t
be asked to take a hand in the slaughter. We’d be mobilized
not as killers but as healers.’
‘That’s so,’ Studler put in quickly and turned to Jousselin,
his mild eyes beaming with impulsive gratitude.
‘And suppose you weren’t doctors?’ Roy rapped out, staring
at each in turn with a challenging gaze. All present knew that
he had not given the army authorities formal notice of his
medical qualifications, and that, during his period of military
service, he had, after a brief spell in a hospital unit, had him-
self returned to duty with his regiment and at present held
the rank of second lieutenant in an infantry regiment.
‘I say, Manuel old chap,’ Antoine grumbled, ‘aren’t you
ever going to give us our coffee?’
He gave the impression of grasping at any pretext for cutting
short the discussion and breaking up the group of disputants.
‘Right you are. Chief!’ The young man leapt briskly to his
feet, swinging a leg over the back of the chair on which he
had been sitting astride.
‘Isaac!’ Antoine called.
Studler approached and Antoine handed him a letter.
‘See this? Those slackers at the Philadelphia Institute have
at last deigned to answer us.’ And, by force of habit added :
‘For the file, please.’
Studler merely stared at him amazedly, without taking the
letter. Forcing his lips into a would-be smile, Antoine tossed
the letter into the wastepaper-basket.
Jousselin and Jacques had remained standing at the far end
of the spacious room, at some distance from the others.
‘Doctor or not,’ Jacques began, without looking in his
brother’s direction but in a louder tone than he would have
used were the words intended for his neighbour only, ‘any
man who obeys the mobilization order is assenting to a
nationalistic policy and, by the same token, to war. For, to
my thinking, the issue is the same for everyone : Does the mere
fact that a Government has given you orders to do so, warrant
your taking part in the butchery?’ He bent closer towards
Jousselin. ‘Even if I weren’t . . . what I am; even if I were
557
SUMMER, 1914
a law-abiding frenchman, well-pleased with his country’s
institutions, I shouldn’t admit the notion that any “reason of
State” could force me to overrule what is for me a duty to
my conscience. A Government that arrogates the right of
dictating to the consciences of its subjects must not reckon
on their support. And a social system that doesn’t take account,
first and foremost, of the moral standards of its members only
gets what it deserves if they despise it and revolt against it.’
Jousselin nodded, remarking; ‘I was a passionate defender
of poor Dreyfus.’
Antoine, who had seemed to be working at his desk, swung
round.
‘The problem’s badly stated.’ His voice rang clear, incisive.
He had risen and, his eyes fixed on Jacques, walked towards
the middle of the room. ‘A democratic Government like ours,
even when its policy is disapproved of by the minority in
opposition, is in power only because it legally represents the
will of the greatest number. Thus the man who joins his regi-
ment when he is called up for service, is obeying the collective
will of the nation — whatever his personal views may be as to
the line of policy the Government in power is following.’
‘You speak of the will of the greatest number,’ Studler said.
‘But at the present moment by far the greatest number, not
to say the whole population of the country, are hoping that
there will not be a war.’
Jacques spoke again, taking care not to seem to address his
brother, and fixing his gaze rather awkwardly on Jousselin.
‘What possible justification can there be for asking the great
mass of people to act against their considered, legitimate
opinions and to subordinate their most cherished convictions
to a blind obedience to the State?’
‘What justification . . .?’ Roy exclaimed, stiffening up as
if he had been dealt a blow.
‘What indeed?’ echoed M. Chasle.
‘The justification,’ Antoine firmly retorted, ‘is the social
contract.’
Roy looked Jacques, then Studler, up and down, as though
defying them to answer. Then with a scornful lift of his shoul-
558
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
ders he turned on his heel, strode across the room to a chair
beside the window, and ensconced himself in it, turning his
back on the others.
Antoine seemed in a brown study; his eyes fixed on the
carpet, he was stirring his coffee with an insistence that
betrayed the tension of his nerves.
Jousselin’s voice broke the ensuing silence.
‘I quite understand you. Chief,’ he said in an amiable tone,
‘and, all things considered, I believe I think as you do. The
existing social system, with all its alleged shortcomings, is
nevertheless a reality for us, for the men of our generation.
It’s something solid, or fairly so, a sort of platform that previous
generations have built up and made over to us — a platform
on which we too have found our footing. I feel that . . . very
strongly indeed.’
‘Just so.’ Antoine went on stirring his coffee, without looking
up. ‘As individuals, we’re feeble, isolated, ineffectual units.
Our strength, or anyhow the greater part of it — in any case,
the possibility of applying our strength to fruitful ends — is
something we owe to the social group that holds us together,
co-ordinates our activities. And for us, in the present state
of things, this group isn’t a mere fiction; it’s something
quite definite and localized in space — and its name is . . .
France.’
He spoke slowly, in a sad but resolute tone, as though he
had long pondered over what he had to say, and was glad
to have an opportunity of giving voice to his conclusions.
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘all of us are members of a national
association and thus to all intents and purposes subordinate
to it. It is this association which enables us to be what we are,
to live in almost complete security and to carry on within its
framework our lives as civilized beings. Between us and this
association there has existed a time-old pact, a voluntary pact,
which is binding on every one of us. It isn’t a matter of
choice; it’s a matter of fact. So long as men live in social
groups, I don’t see how individual members of a group can cry
off their duties towards the community which protects them
and in the amenities of which they share.’
559
SUMMER, 1914
‘Not all,’ Studler interjected.
Antoine threw a quick glance at him.
‘Yes, all. Unequally, perhaps, but all to some extent. You
and I ; the worker and the bourgeois ; the ward-attendant and
the house physician. By the mere fact that from birth we are
members of a community, and each of us occupies a place
in it, a privilege which he turns daily to account. And, in
return for this, it’s up to him to abide by the social contract.
Now one of the first clauses of the contract is this : everyone
must respect and obey the laws of the land, even if in the
course of his private ruminations on things in general, some
of them may seem to him unjust. If people started repudiating
their duties to the State, it would mean a break-up of the
whole system of institutions which make a national community
like that of France a living, thriving organism. It would under-
mine the whole social structure. . . .’
‘Yes,’ Jacques murmured.
‘And what is more’ — there was an almost vicious edge to
Antoine’s voice — ‘it would be a short-sighted line of action.
It would work against the true interests of the individual as
well. For the chaos that would come of this anarchic revolt
against law and order would entail for him infinitely more
disagreeable consequences than if he had submitted to the
law of the land, for all its imperfections.’
‘I wonder !’ Studler put in quickly.
Antoine cast another glance at the Caliph and this time took
a step towards him.
‘As members of the community, haven’t we got to submit
time and again to laws of which as private citizens we dis-
approve? Meanwhile of course, the State authorizes us to break
a lance with it if we so wish ; freedom of thought and speech
is still permitted in France. What’s more we have a legal
weapon always to hand — the vote.’
Studler riposted with an ironic snort. ‘The vote indeed !
It’s a barefaced ramp, this so-called universal franchise here
in France. In a population of forty millions barely twelve
millions have the vote. So if six millions and the odd man out
vote one way it constitutes what they’ve the nerve to call a
560
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
majority of the nation. Thirty-four million poor benighted fools
bow to the will of six million voters, and I needn’t tell you
how they vote — with their eyes shut, under the influence of
tap-room gossip. No, the Frenchman has no real political power.
Has he, for instance, any means of altering the constitution,
of protesting against, or even discussing, the new laws that are
foisted on him? He isn’t even asked for his opinion on alliances
that are entered into in his name, and which may land him
in wars that may very well cost him his life. So much for what
in France we call the “sovereign rights of the people!” ’
T beg your pardon,’ Antoine replied composedly. T can’t
say I feel so helpless as all that. Obviously I’m not personally
consulted about every detail of the nation’s life. But if the
powers-that-be adopt a line of policy distasteful to me I can
always vote for those who will oppose it in Parliament. Mean-
while, so long as my vote has failed to put out of power the
parties which, as things are, represent the wishes of the greatest
number, and to replace them by others which will modify the
national policy on the lines that I desire — until that happens,
my duty is plain, and there’s no getting behind it. I’m bound
by the social contract. I must make the best of it. I must
obey.’
'Dura lex,' M. Chasle was heard to twitter sagely in the pause
that followed, ‘ “sad” lex, indeed.’
The Caliph was stumping up and down the room.
‘It’s a moot point,’ he grunted, ‘whether, all things considered,
the revolutionary troubles that would follow a general refusal
to obey the mobilization order mightn’t be a vastly lesser evil
than — ’
‘Than even the shortest of wars,’ Jacques ended off the
phrase.
From the far end of the room came a sudden creak of chair-
springs ; Roy had moved, but he said nothing.
‘Personally, Chief,’ Jousselin said quietly, ‘I think as you do;
I’ll obey. Still I can well understand that to some people, at
so dramatic a moment — on the brink of a catastrophe like the
one that’s threatening us now — obedience may seem a duty
that’s inhuman, intolerable.’
561
SUMMER, 1914
‘On the contrary,’ Antoine rejoined. ‘The more a man is
conscious of the gravity of the situation, the more compelling
he should find the call of duty.’
There was a pause while he replaced his coffee-cup on the
tray, untasted. His lips were twitching.
‘I’ve been having it out with myself during these last few
days,’ he suddenly confessed in a voice so shaken and forlorn
that involuntarily Jacques swung round and gazed at him.
Antoine had pressed his thumb and forefinger into the sockets
of his eyelids, and he stayed thus for some moments before
looking up and darting a keen, enigmatic glance towards his
brother. Then, weighing his words, he spoke again.
‘If an order for mobilization were issued to-night by a
Government elected by the majority — even if I had voted
against it — well, it’s not because of any personal views I may
have about war, because I belonged to a minority in oppo-
sition, that I’d give myself the right to break the social pact
deliberately and sneak out of duties which are the same,
exactly the same, for every one of us.’
Jacques heard him out with only the faintest impulse to
protest against these remarks, so obviously intended for him-
self. He felt far less revolted by Antoine’s views than touched,
in spite of himself, by the profoundly human, vibrant, personal
emotion that lay behind the dogmatic tone in which they were
expressed. Moreover, however great the cleavage between his
brother’s outlook and his own, he had to admit that, in the
circumstances, Antoine’s attitude was wholly logical, self-
consistent.
Testily, as though someone had voiced a flatly contrary
opinion, Antoine folded his arms, exclaiming:
‘Damn it all, that would be really too convenient if one could
keep one’s nationality up to the outbreak of a war — and then
discard it !’
A silence followed, tense with unspoken thoughts. Jousselin,
whose sensitive mind had registered every shift of feeling, made
haste to create a diversion. Genially, as if the debate were
closed and agreement had been reached, he voiced the sum-
ming-up.
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
‘In the last analysis the Chief is right. Life in a community
is a sort of game ; either one abides by the rules, or one stands
out. It’s up to each of us to chose.’
A low voice beside him said, ‘I have chosen.’
Jousselin looked round; his eyes lingered on Jacques with
involuntary emotion. It was as if he glimpsed beyond the
living, real presence the vision of some tragic destiny.
Leon’s hairless face appeared in the chink of the half-open
door. He said to Antoine :
‘You’re wanted at the telephone, sir.’
Antoine stared at the servant, blinking as if he had just been
startled out of sleep. At last he pulled his wits together. ‘That’s
Anne again,’ he thought.
‘Right. I’ll come.’
He paused some moments, frowning, with lowered eyes;
then slowly walked out of the room.
‘What’s she going to say to me?’ he murmured as he entered
his study. ‘ “You don’t care for me any more. You don’t love
me as much as you used to.” The time comes, ineluctably,
when a woman starts saying that — every woman. She’d have
quite a shock if someone told her what it is we “don’t care
for any more” ; that it isn’t she but ourselves we’ve ceased to
care for — oneself as one has come to be with her. It’s not “You
don’t care for me any more” that she should say, but: “You’ve
ceased caring for the man that you become when we’re
together.” ’
His eyes fell on the telephone; without quite realizing what
he was about, he took up the receiver.
‘Is that you, Tony dear?’
He gave a start, almost of revolt, and stood still listening
to the familiar, too familiar voice, its low, bell-like cadences
of exquisitely studied softness. He could not bring himself to
answer. A cold rage came over him. For two days past he had
felt delivered from her, from the thrall of passion. Not only
freed, but cleansed, as if he had washed himself clean of some
defilement. A thought of Simon crossed his mind. No, it was
over and done with ; their ways had parted for good and all.
Why toy with any prospect of return?
563
SUMMER, 1914
Laying down the receiver gently in the centre of the table,
he drew back a step. He could hear an intermittent buzz,
then a series of little panting gasps, that gruesomely evoked the
stridence of a death-rattle. . . . No, there was no help for it ;
cost what it might, he must not resume contact with her. . . .
But, instead of going to rejoin his friends in the reception
room, he turned the key of his study door, went back to the
sofa, lit a cigarette and with a last glance at the table on which
the telephone receiver, silent now, lay sleek and coiled like a
small dead reptile, let his bulk sink heavily amongst the
cushions.
Meanwhile, in the reception room, M. Chasle had planted
himself in front of the fireplace, where he had buttonholed
Studler, and, delighted at being able in his turn to hold forth
and be listened to, was trying to explain in his quaint jargon,
muddled and malapropian, the nature of the business he had
launched.
‘The latest wheezes, small inventions, gadgets, don’t you
know? The Very Latest, that’s our slogan. What’s that? Look
here. I’ll send you round our little L.R. magazine. (“L.R.”
stands for League of Researchers.) You’ll see what I mean.
We’re thinking up new outlets, on the side, so to say. Got to,
what with this war. Yes, we’re going to strike out in a new
direction. National Defence. Everyone must do his bit. What’s
that?’ He sprinkled such enquiries through his monologue in
a tone of querulous anxiety, as if he had just failed to catch
some vital question. ‘Why already, our researchers are handing
in some most sensational inventions,’ he went on at once. ‘Got
to keep ’em dark, of course, but I don’t mind telling you that
one is a portable filter. The soldier’s friend. For filtering rain-
water and pond-water. All the dangerous bacillaries that deci-
mate the soldier’s constitution, don’t you know?’ He gave a
little gleeful chuckle. ‘And we’ve something even more sen-
sational up our sleeve: an automatic gun-sight with a trigger
release. For infantrymen with bad eyesight. Or even for
gunners.’
Roy, who had been vaguely listening from his chair to the
old fellow’s divagations, now stood up.
564
FRIDAY, JULY 31
‘An automatic sight? How on earth . . .?’
‘Exactly,’ M. Chasle piped, highly flattered. ‘That’s the
charm of it.’
‘But, damn it, how does it work?’
Chasle replied with a lofty flourish of his hand :
‘All by itself’
Jacques and Jousselin had not moved from the corner near
the bookshelves, and were conversing in low tones. An angry
frown furrowed Jacques’ brow.
‘The most exasperating thing,’ he was saying, ‘is to think
that a day is bound to come, in the near future very likely,
when people simply won’t be able to understand how this
business of military service, nations in arms and so forth, ever
came to be regarded as something necessary, and warfare as
an almost sacred duty. A day when it will seem unthinkable
that a representative tribunal could have a man shot for
refusing to take up arms. Exactly as it seems preposterous to
us to-day that in the past thousands of men were tried and
tortured for their religious beliefs.’
Before Jousselin could reply Roy’s voice was heard.
‘Just listen to this !’
He had picked up a newspaper from the desk and was
skimming its contents. In clear, crisp tones, his eyes dancing
with laughter, he read :
Young Married Couple with one child wish to rent for
three months country cottage with old-world garden, and
good fishing in the vicinity, preferably in Normandy or
Burgundy. Write Box 3418.
His laugh rang crystal-clear. He was indeed the only one
of them who knew how to laugh that day.
‘Cheerful as a schoolboy off for the holidays,’ Jacques
observed.
‘No,’ Jousselin amended. ‘Cheerful as a true hero should
be ; when there’s no joy there isn’t any heroism — only valour.’
M. Chasle had taken out his watch and, as he always did
before looking at the dial, held it to his ear with the absorbed
565
SUMMER, 1914
air of a doctor listening to a patient’s heart. Then, lifting his
brows over the rim of his spectacles, he announced :
‘One thirty-seven.’
Jacques gave a start.
‘I’m late,’ he said, shaking hands with Jousselin. ‘I must be
off ; I can’t wait for my brother.’
Antoine who was lying on the sofa, heard Jacques’ voice
in the hall as Leon showed him out. He flung the study door
open, and shouted:
‘Jacques ! Wait !’
As Jacques, much surprised, turned and walked towards
him, Antoine added :
‘Going away already?’
‘Yes.’
Antoine laid his hand on Jacques’ arm. ‘Come in for a
moment,’ he said rather unsteadily.
Jacques had come to his brother’s place with the intention
of having a private talk with him ; he proposed to let him know
the use to which he was putting his father’s legacy, for he
did not care to seem to be making a seen.; of it from Antoine.
He had even had an idea of mentioning Jenny as well. So he
fell in with his brother’s suggestion readily enough, and entered
the study.
Antoine closed the door, and remained standing near it.
‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Let’s talk seriously now, old chap. What
exactly do you intend to do?’
Jacques feigned an air of bewilderment, and made no reply.
‘You’ve been exempted,’ Antoine went on, ‘on grounds of
health. But, if there’s a general mobilization, they’ll revise all
such exemptions and pack off pretty well everyone to the
firing line. What do you propose to do about it?’
Jacques realized that he was cornered.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve no idea as yet. For the moment they
can’t get at me; so far as the law’s concerned. I’m out of their
clutches.’ Seeing his brother’s eyes still bent on him insistently,
he added: ‘Anyhow this much I can tell you — I’d rather cut
off both my hands than let myself be mobilized.’
For a moment Antoine looked away.
566
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
‘That, in my opinion, is the attitude of . .
‘A coward?’
‘No,’ Antoine protested affectionately, ‘that’s not what I
meant at all. . . . The attitude of — shall we say? — an egoist.’
Jacques took it without flinching; Antoine continued: ‘Don’t
you agree? To refuse to do one’s duty at such a moment is
to sacrifice the public interest to one’s own.’
‘To sacrifice the national interest, yes. But the interest of the
general public, of the masses, lies most obviously in peace and
not in war.’
Antoine made a vague gesture, as though to wave away
such purely theoretical considerations. But Jacques pressed
his argument home.
‘It’s I who am furthering the interests of the public by
refusing to join up. And I’m certain, absolutely certain, that the
voice within me which says “No” is the voice of all that’s best
in me.’
It cost Antoine an effort not to betray his impatience.
‘That’s all very well, but — ! Look here, what practical effects
do you expect your standing out to have? None whatever.
Once a general mobilization is decreed, and the vast majority
(as is bound to happen) answer the call to national defence,
what could be more futile, more surely doomed to fail, than
an isolated gesture like yours, a one-man mutiny?’
Antoine’s tone was so carefully controlled, and so affectionate,
that Jacques was touched by it. He gazed at his brother quite
calmly, even conjuring up the ghost of a smile.
‘Why go over all the ground again, old chap? You know
quite well what my views are. I’ll never tolerate the idea that
a government can force me into taking part in an enterprise
I look on as a crime, a betrayal of truth and justice and human
solidarity. Heroism, as I see it, isn’t in Roy’s camp; it doesn’t
consist in shouldering a gun and marching to the frontier. No,
the truly heroic thing is to refuse to fight, to let oneself be led
before the firing squad, rather than submit to being roped in
as an accomplice. “A futile sacrifice,” you say? Who knows?
What has made wars possible in the past and makes them
possible still, is the tame submission of the masses to their
567
SUMMER, 1914
governments. “A one-man mutiny,” you say? Well, if those
with the courage to say “No” are few in number, it can’t be
helped. It may be simply because — ’ he hesitated — ‘because
a certain type of moral courage is pretty rare.’
Antoine had listened standing statue-still but for an almost
imperceptible tremor of his eyebrows. He was staring fixedly
at his brother, breathing rather heavily like a man asleep.
At last he replied in a gentle, understanding voice.
‘I don’t deny that it needs a rare moral courage to stand
out, alone or almost alone, against an order for general mobiliza-
tion. But it’s a courage put forth in vain, that runs its head
idiotically against a brick wall. A man of strong convictions
who refuses to fight and gets himself shot for his principles
has all my sympathy, and pity. But I regard him as a futile
dreamer — and I say he’s wrong.’
Jacques’ only response was a slight raising of his arms —
the same gesture as he had made when saying ‘it can’t be
helped.’
Antoine gazed at him in silence; but he had not yet given
up hope.
‘The facts are these,’ he said at last, ‘and there’s ho getting
away from them. To-morrow the serious turn events have
have taken — it looks as if they’d got completely out of hand
— may compel the Government to call on our services. Do you
seriously think this is the moment for us to start questioning
if the duties imposed on us by our country fit in with our
personal opinions? No, the men in charge have got to decide
for us, and tell us how to act. In my profession, when I pre-
scribe for some urgent case a course of treatment that I judge
advisable, I don’t allow anybody to question it.’
He raised his hand towards his forehead and for a moment
pressed his fingers on his eyelids; when he spoke again, the
words came with an effort.
‘Do think it over, dear old chap. It’s not a matter of approv-
ing of the war — do you think I approve of it? — but of seeing
it through. In a spirit of revolt, perhaps, if we’re built that
way, but a revolt that we keep to ourselves, that our sense
of duty reduces to an inward protest. To haggle over doing
568
FRIDAY, JULY 31
one’s share in the hour of danger, would be to let down the
nation as a whole. Yes, I see the conduct of the man who
insists on “standing out” as nothing less than treachery, a crime
against his fellow men. Mind you, I don’t say one hasn’t got
the right to criticize decisions that the Government may think
fit to make. But only later on. After one has done one’s duty.’
Again the ghost of a smile flitted across Jacques’ lips.
‘I’m afraid I don’t agree; my view is that the private citizen
has the right to dissociate himself entirely from the nationalist
ambitions in the name of which countries go to war. I deny
that the State is justified in forcing a man, for any reason
whatsoever, to go against his conscience. High-sounding phrases
— I hate to be always using them ! But there it is ! Somehow
my conscience makes itself heard above time-serving arguments
like those you’ve just been using. Above the laws of the land
as well. The only way of preventing violence from being the
deciding factor in world affairs, is to refuse point-blank to take
a hand in violence. In my opinion, the refusal to take part
in killing one’s fellow men is a sign of nobility of mind, and
entitled to respect. If your codes and judges don’t respect
it, so much the worse for them. Sooner or later the day of
reckoning will come.’
Have it your own way !’ Antoine sounded annoyed ; it vexed
him to find the conversation diverted once more towards
generalities. Folding his arms he asked: ‘But what actually do
you propose to do?’
He walked towards Jacques and, with one of those impul-
sive gestures that were so rare between the brothers, affec-
tionately clasped Jacques’ shoulders with both hands.
‘Tell me, Jacques old chap. They’re mobilizing to-morrow.
What are you going to do?’
Quietly but firmly Jacques freed himself
‘I’ll go on fighting against war. To the end. By every method.
Including, if needs be, revolutionary methods, sabotage.’ His
voice had sunk, despite himself, to a whisper, and now he
paused as if struggling with a dark oppression. After a while
he added : ‘I say that ... I don’t know. . . . But one thing’s
absolutely certain, Antoine. You’ll never see me in uniform !’
569
SUMMER, 1914
With a forlorn, ineffectual smile, a hasty gesture of farewell,
he turned and walked towards the door. Antoine made no
effort to detain him.
38
Friday^ July ji
JACQUES AND JENNY SPEND THE AFTERNOON IN SOCIALIST CIRCLES
Jenny was dressed to go out, when Jacques came. Her
haggard, woebegone appearance betrayed her state of feverish
anxiety. No news of any sort had come from her mother or
from Daniel, and she was the prey of vague, unformulated
apprehensions. The newspapers had added to her alarm and,
to crown all, Jacques was overdue. She could riot rid her
mind of memories of their brush with the police after Jacques’
speech; something had happened to him, she was convinced.
. . . Unable to utter a word, she flung herself into his arms.
T’ve tried,’ he said, ‘to discover exactly what they’re doing
about foreigners in Austria. I’m afraid we must face the fact
that the country’s under martial law. German subj’ects are still
being allowed to go back to their country; so, I believe, are
Italians, though relations between Italy and Austria are ex-
tremely strained. But it’s another thing for French, British and
Russian subjects. If your mother didn’t leave Vienna some
days ago — and, if she had, she’d have been here by now — I’m
afraid it’s too late. I mean, she’ll be prevented from leaving.’
‘Prevented? How? Will they put her in prison?’
‘Of course not. The most they’ll do will be to refuse permits
to travel. That will last a week or two, while they wait to see
the turn events are taking and the international situation is
being cleared uo.’
570
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
Jenny made no reply. Already Jacques’ presence had laid
the spectres of her fear. She clung to him, giving herself up
blindly, rapturously, to the ecstasy of their embrace, for the
return of which she had been longing through the hours of
absence. At last she slipped from his arms, imploring
brokenly :
‘I can’t bear being left alone, Jacques ! Take me with you.
I want to be beside you always, everywhere.’
They set off on foot towards the Luxembourg Gardens.
‘We’ll catch a tram at the MMicis corner,’ Jacques said.
Usually crowded in the afternoon, the gardens were that
day almost empty. The tree-tops rustled in a light breeze and
a cloying scent of marigolds rose from the flower-beds. On
an isolated bench a pair of lovers, pressed so closely to each
other that their features were hidden, seemed to fill the languid
air with amorous vibrations.
After crossing the gardens, they were plunged again into
the seething tumult of the streets, whose fitful rumble seemed
an echo of the alarming rumours which, on that fine summer
afternoon, were speeding from one end of Europe to the other.
Two days before, Paris had been depleted by the exodus of
holiday-makers ; now, abruptly, it was full again. The air was
strident with the cries of news-vendors selling special editions.
While Jacques and Jenny waited for their tram, a station ’bus
drawn by two horses rattled past. Inside several families —
parents, children, nurses — were huddled close together;
amongst the piles of luggage on the roof were to be seen a
shrimping-net, a parasol and a perambulator.
‘People who don’t know when they’re beaten,’ Jacques
observed, ‘defying destiny !’
There was no break in the traffic along the Boulevard St.
Michel and adjoining streets. Yet here was neither the bustle
of a week-day, nor the leisurely disorder of a fine Sunday after-
noon; rather, the chaotic ferment of a flustered ant-heap.
People hurried along as though pressed for time, but their
absent gaze and vacillation which way to turn at the street-
corners, showed plainly enough that few of them knew or cared
where they were going. Unable to face up to themselves — or
571
SUMMER, 1914
to the look of things — alone, they had left homes and jobs,
with the sole object of escaping from their thoughts and being
able for a while to merge their personal forebodings in the
collective apprehension of the crowd.
All the afternoon, silent and faithful as his shadow, Jenny
followed Jacques, from the Latin Quarter to the Batignolles,
from the Glaci^re to the Bastille, from the Bercy docks to the
Chateau d’Eau. Everywhere they heard the same chorus of
indignation at the turn events had taken, but everywhere, too,
they found most people bowing already to the storm, meekly
preparing to ‘see it through.’
Now and then, when they happened to be alone, Jenny
would begin talking about herself, or the weather, without the
least constraint. ‘Really, I shouldn’t have worn this veil. Do
let’s cross the road and look at that flower-shop. It’s getting
a bit cooler now, don’t you feel it? One can breathe again.’
Jacques felt slightly irritated by this harmless small-talk, which
seemed abruptly to place on equal footing a florist’s display,
the European crisis and a drop in the temperature. At such
moments he would cast an indifferent, almost surly glance at
his companion, and the dark fires that slumbered in his eyes
would suddenly abash her into silence. But sometimes, too,
he would turn away and, in gentler mood, ask himself: ‘Am
I right in mixing her up in all this?’
At C.G.T. headquarters he caught one of his friends, whom
they chanced to meet in the hall, casting a severe, appraising
glance at Jenny. And suddenly he realized how out of keeping
she must look in these dusty precincts, amongst these working
men — in her neat tailor-made costume, with her crape veil,
and, in her bearing and expression, that subtle difference which
bespeaks a certain social milieu. It made him so uncomfortable
that he hurried her out of the place at once.
Clocks were striking seven. By way of the boulevards they
walked to the Bourse quarter. Jenny was tired. The vital force
that emanated from Jacques, while dominating her, sapped
her energies. She remembered how in the old days she used
often to have the same feeling of exhaustion and strain when
she was with him. It was due to the continuous mental effort
572
FRIDAY, JULY 31
that he seemed to expect from those around him and indeed
forced upon them by his tone of voice, his compelling gaze
and sudden shifts of thought.
As they were nearing the HumaniU office, Cadieux came
running from the opposite direction.
‘We’re for it !’ he bawled. ‘Germany’s mobilizing. Russia has
brought it off!’
Jacques swung round abruptly, but Cadieux was almost out
of sight.
‘I’ve got to find out. Wait for me here.’ He was chary of
taking Jenny with him into the newspaper office.
Crossing the road, she began walking up and down the
pavement. Like bees coming and going at a hive, people were
swarming in and out of the building Jacques had entered.
He came back after an hour, looking greatly disturbed.
‘It’s official. The news comes from Germany. I’ve seen
Groussier, Sembat, Vaillant, Renaudel. They’re all gathered
there, waiting for more details. Cadieux and Marc Levoir are
running to and fro between the Quai d’Orsay and the news-
paper office. Germany’s mobilizing because Russia’s speeding
up her preparations. The question is : Is it a real mobilization?
Jaures swears it isn’t. It’s what they call in German Kriegsge-
fahrzustand—?,omGthxn^ we’ve no exact equivalent for in French.
Jaures, dictionary in hand, gave us the literal translation :
“A state of danger of war.” He’s a marvel, is the Skipper.
Nothing makes him give up hope. He’s still under the influence
of the conversations he had at Brussels with Haase and the
German socialists. He keeps on saying: “So long as those
chaps are with us, nothing’s lost.” ’
He had taken Jenny’s arm and hurried her along beside
him, walking blindly ahead. They went round the block of
houses 'several times in this way.
‘What is France going to do?’ Jenny asked.
‘It seems that a Cabinet Council has been summoned for
four o’clock. A communique has been issued to the effect that
the Cabinet have decided “to take all necessary steps for safe-
guarding our frontiers.” The Havas press agency reports this
evening that our covering troops have taken up their advanced
573
SUMMER, 1914
posts, but the General Staff proposes to leave an unoccupied
zone a mile or two deep along the frontier, so as not to give
the enemy a pretext for launching an attack. The German
ambassador is in conference with Viviani at the present moment.
Gallot, who’s well up as regards German methods, takes a
gloomy view. He says it’s no use our nursing illusions as to
what is meant by a Kriegsgefahrzustand\ it’s merely a back-
stairs form of mobilization, pending its official announcement.
In any case Germany is now under martial law; which means
that the press is muzzled, and anti-war demonstrations can
no longer take place over there. That, to my mind, is perhaps
the most serious thing; I see no hope of saving the situation
except by a rising of the masses. . . . Stefany, however, is
like Jaur^s — obstinately optimistic. They say that the Kaiser,
by taking this preliminary measure instead of mobilizing right
away, has shown his peaceable intentions. After all, there may
be something in that view. Germany’s left the door open for
the Russian Government to make at the eleventh hour a con-
ciliatory move, perhaps to call off their mobilization. It seems
that since yesterday there’s been a steady stream of private
telegrams between the Kaiser and the Czar. Just as I was
leaving Stefany, Jaures was called to the ’phone. Brussels had
rung him up and they all seemed full of hope that the message
would prove important. I didn’t stay, as I’d kept you waiting
so long already. . . .’
‘Don’t bother about me!’ Jenny exclaimed promptly. ‘Go
back at once, Jacques. I’ll wait for you.’
‘What, in the street? No — look here. I’ll take you to the
“Progres” ; at least you can sit down there.’
As they were hurrying to the cafe, a hollow voice behind
them growled : ‘Good day !’
Jenny looked round. The speaker was an old man whose
face brought to mind that of the Saviour in early works of
art; round him billowed the flowing black smock worn by
French printers. It was Mourlan.
‘Germany’s mobilizing,’ Jacques said at once.
‘Of course she is. It was a cert anyhow.’ He spat. ‘There’s
nothing to be done. There never is! And there’ll be nothing
574
FRIDAY, JULY 3 I
to be done for many a long day yet. Everything’s got to be
smashed to start with. Our whole damned civilization’s got
to go, before we can bring any decency into the world.’ After
a pause he added: ‘Going to the “Progres?” Yes? So’m I.’
They took some steps in silence before the old printer spoke
again.
‘Look here! Have you thought over what I told you this
morning? Aren’t you going to clear out of here?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Please yourself, lad. But I’ve just been told. . . .’ He hesi-
tated, glanced at Jenny, then fixed his eyes meaningly on
Jacques. ‘I’ve something to say to you.’
‘Say it.’ Jacques laid his hand on Jenny’s arm, adding to
emphasize the gesture: ‘You can speak freely. Anything you
say won’t go further.’
‘Right 1’ Mourlan placed two gnarled fingers on Jacques’
shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘Here’s a tip straight from the
horse’s mouth. The War Minister signed an order to-day for
the arrest of all the suspects on Blacklist B.’
‘What !’ Jacques exclaimed.
The old man nodded and muttered between his teeth : ‘So all
concerned had better watch their step I’
Then he noticed that Jenny had gone quite white and was
staring at him aghast. He smiled to her.
‘Now, now, young lady, there’s no need to take on like that.
It don’t mean we’ll all be lined up against a wall to-night.
But the order’s been signed, so as to have it ready when the
time comes. When they want to get us out of the way and bring
off their big parade without anyone to say “Boo!” to them,
they’ll only have to tell their special squads to carry out the
order. The “tecs” have started already in the suburbs. I hear
they’ve searched the premises of the Drapeau Rouge and La Lutte.
Iszakovitch was very nearly copped this morning in a police
raid at Puteaux. Fuzet’s in clink; he’s charged with having
made that poster “Blood on Their Hands” — you know, the
one against the General Staff. There’s trouble brewing, young
’uns, and you’d best keep your eyes skinned.’
They entered the cafe. Jacques led Jenny to a table in the
575
SUMMER, 1914
lower room, which was practically empty. He turned to
Mourlan.
‘Have a drink with us.’
‘No, thanks.’ Mourlan pointed to the ceiling. ‘I’m going
upstairs for a bit to see what they’re up to now. What a lot
o’ bunkum must have been talked up there since this morning !’
Shaking Jacques’ hand he said again in a low voice: ‘Take
my tip, lad, and clear out of Paris !’
He bestowed on the two young people a large, genial, un-
expected smile, before turning and stumping noisily up the
narrow spiral staircase.
‘Where will you sleep to-night?’ Jenny enquired anxiously.
‘Surely not at that hotel the address of which you gave them
last night?’
‘Oh,’ he replied carelessly, ‘I’m far from certain they’ve
done me the honour of putting me on their famous blacklist.’
Then, seeing the consternation in her eyes, he added : ‘Anyhow,
you needn’t worry, I’m not going back to Liebaert’s. I deposited
my bag this morning at Mourlan’s place. And the only docu-
ments I have which might be compromising are in that packet
I left with you.’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking him in the eyes. ‘Our flat is perfectly
safe.’
He had not sat down. He ordered tea but had not patience
enough to wait till it was brought.
‘You’re all right here, aren’t you? I’ll just run round to the
Humanite. Don’t move from here.’
‘Sure you’ll come back?’ she asked in a frightened voice.
A sudden panic had swept over her; she looked down, to hide
from him her discomfiture. But then she felt the pressure of
Jacques’ hand on hers and the unspoken reproach brought
a blush to her cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean that. Go at once. I’ll
be quite all right.’
After he had gone she took some sips of the so-called tea
the waiter had set on the table; it tasted bitter and, pushing
the cup away, she rested her elbows on the cool marble.
Through the wide-open window, with the noises of the street,
a flood of dazzling sunshine came pouring in, flashing upon
576
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
the mirrors, glinting on the brass fittings, glass and smooth
mahogany of the counter. Behind it, in a haze of broken lights,
to a sound of running water, the landlord was busy rinsing
out carafes. Newspapers lay scattered on the tables. Jenny
gazed idly at the scene, her mind void of thoughts. As the
slow minutes passed, her tired brain grew peopled with a phan-
tom horde of dark forebodings, sudden fears, obsessions of her
early youth. She tried to fix her attention on a grey cat curled
up on the seat beside her. Was it really sleeping? Its eyes were
closed, but its ears twitched, and its whole attitude struck her
as constrained, as though it were trying to force itself to sleep.
Had the vague panic brooding in the air somehow affected
even the cats of Paris? fVas it asleep — or only pretending?
Pretending for whose benefit? For its own, perhaps. . . . Night
was falling. Every minute workmen were coming in, exchang-
ing a conspiratorial glance with the landlord, then marching
upstairs. Each time the door of the room above was opened,
there came a gust of noise, of voices raised in argument mingling
with the rumour of the street.
‘Here I am !’
Jenny gave a start ; she had not seen him coming.
He sat down beside her. His brows were beaded with sweat.
With a toss of his head he jerked back his dangling forelock ;
then began mopping his face.
‘There’s a bit of news come in,’ he said in an undertone,
‘that’s like a ray of light in the “encircling gloom.” That tele-
phone call was a message sent us by the German Social-Demo-
crats, via Brussels. They’re not giving up the struggle; quite
the contrary. Jaures is right; those fellows are loyal to the
core, nothing will make them flinch. Of course, they’re up
against it at that end, just as we are. And they’re more eager
than ever to keep in touch, so that we all can act in concert.
Only, with martial law proclaimed in Germany, it’s going to
be pretty hard to keep in communication. So they’re sending,
by way of Belgium, a delegate named Hermann Muller ; he’ll
be in Paris to-morrow and, I gather, he’ll have full powers
to pledge his party. The idea is that he will arrange with the
French Socialists to take immediate action on a large scale
577
u
SUMMER, 1914
against the forces making for war. You see? At the HumaniU
all hopes centre on this unlooked-for opportunity — this eleventh-
hour meeting that will take place to-morrow between Muller
and Jaur^s — the pact of the two proletariats. There’s no doubt
but that far-reaching decisions will be come to between them.
Stefany tells me the idea’s to organize in both countries a vast,
simultaneous revolt of the whole working class. It was overdue.
But it’s never too late. With a general strike we’ve still good
prospects of success.’
He spoke rapidly, in jerky phrases; his excitement was
infectious.
‘The Skipper’s going to publish to-morrow a really terrific
leader — something on the lines of Zola’s famous accuse'' '
Jenny’s slightly puzzled look told him that the Zola allusion
— which indeed was not his own, but came from Pag^s, Gallot’s
secretary — was lost on her ; for some seconds he was dismayed
at the thought of all that still divided her from him.
‘Did you talk to Jaures?’ she innocently inquired.
‘No, not this time. But I happened to be with Pages on the
stairs, when Jaures was leaving. As usual he had a number
of friends with him, and I heard what he was saying to them.
“I’ll leave nothing out in the article I’m publishing to-morrow.
I mean to denounce everyone who’s been mixed up in the
dirty business. Yes, this time I’ll tell all I know.” And — would
you believe it?— he was laughing as he spoke. I’ll swear to it.
Positively guffawing. He has a laugh that’s all his own, a big,
hearty, heartening chuckle. After that he said: “Let’s have
some dinner first, anyhow. The nearest place, eh? What about
Albert’s?” ’
She gazed at him without speaking.
‘Would it amuse you to have a close-up view ofhim?’ Jacques
asked. ‘We’ll go and have something to eat at the “Croissant.”
I’ll point him out to you. I’m famished. We’ve earned our
dinner, too, don’t you agree?’
578
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
39
Friday^ July
THE ASSASSINATION OF JAURES
I T was after half-past nine and most of the ‘Croissant’s’
regular customers had left. Jacques and Jenny chose a table
in an empty corner, to the right of the entrance.
On the left several tables had been run together parallel
to the Boulevard Montmartre, for Jaures and his party.
‘There he is,’ Jacques said. ‘In the middle, with his back
to the window. Now he’s turning to talk to Albert, the pro-
prietor.’
‘He doesn’t look so awfully worried.’ Jenny’s tone of naive
surprise enchanted Jacques. He gently squeezed her elbow.
‘Do you know those people with him?’ she continued.
‘Yes. The man on Jaures’ right is Philippe Landrieu. The
fat man on his left is Renaudel. Dubreuihl is facing Renaudel,
and Jean Longuet’s beside him.’
‘Who’s the woman?’
‘Mme. Poisson, I think — the wife of the fellow opposite
Landrieu. Next to her is Am^dee Dunois. The two Renoult
brothers are sitting in front of her. The man who’s just come
in and is standing by the table is a friend of Almereyda’s and
on the staff of the Bonnet Rouge, but I can’t recall his . . .’
A crisp report, like the bang of a bursting tyre, cut him
short. Quickly followed a second detonation, a shrill clash of
breaking glass. A mirror on the back waU of the cafe had been
shivered into fragments.
A moment of appalled silence, then a deafening uproar.
Everybody was standing up, staring at the broken glass, talking
excitedly. ‘Someone fired a shot at that glass !’ ‘Who?’ ‘Where
from?’ ‘From the street.’ ‘Why?’
Two waiters dashed outside. Shouts came from the street.
Instinctively Jacques had jumped up and, shielding Jenny
579
SUMMER, 1914
with his arm, was trying to catch sight of Jaurfes. He had a
brief glimpse of the Skipper seated quite calmly at his place
amidst his friends, who had risen to their feet and gathered
round him. He seemed to be slowly stooping to pick up some-
thing on the floor. Then Jacques lost sight of him.
The landlord’s wife ran past Jacques’ table, screaming :
‘They’ve shot Monsieur Jaur^s !’
‘Stay here !’ Jacques pressed Jenny’s shoulder, to make her
sit down, then dashed over to the Skipper’s table.
A number of people had gathered round the little group of
Jaur^s’ friends and barred the way. He heard breathless cries :
‘A doctor, quick!’ ‘Fetch the police!’ Elbowing his way round
the long table he managed to reach a comer whence he could
see a body lying on the wall-sofa, half concealed by Renaudel,
who was bending over it. Then Renaudel straightened up,
letting fall on the table a blood-stained napkin. Jacques caught
sight of Jaur&s’ face ; his lips were parted, his cheeks pale, and
his eyes shut. He seemed to have fainted.
One of the men who had been dining in the restaurant — a
doctor, apparently — pushed his way through the group. With
a quick jerk he pulled off Jaur^s’ tie, opened his collar and,
grasping the drooping wrist, felt for the pulse.
Imp>erious cries broke through the hubbub: ‘Keep quiet
there!’ ‘Ssh!’ All eyes were riveted on the man holding the
Skipper’s wrist. He was bent double over the prostrate form,
but his face was upturned and his eyes were fixed on the cornice
in a trance-like stare. Then, without changing his position or
looking at any of those present, he gently, sadly, shook his head.
People were flocking into the restaurant from the street.
M. Albert shouted :
‘Shut the door ! Shut the windows and let down the shutters !’
An eddy of the crowd forced Jacques back into the centre
of the room. Some of Jaur^s’ friends had lifted the body and
were carefully transporting it on to two empty tables that had
been run together. The knot of people round the body was
growing steadily denser and all Jacques could make out was
the white rim of a marble table-top and two huge, dusty,
upended boot-soles.
580
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
‘Make way for the doctor !’
Andre Renoult had gone to fetch a doctor and the two men
had entered together. They forced a way through the serried
mass that yielded and closed in again behind them. The minute
or two of agonized suspense that followed seemed interminable.
Then Jacques saw the bent shoulders of the men in front of
him straightening up and those who had kept their hats on
taking them off. Low whispers passed from lip to lip: ‘He’s
dead.’ ‘Jaur^s is dead.’
His eyes full of tears, Jacques glanced over his shoulder in
Jenny’s direction. She had been only waiting for a look from
him to hasten to his side. Threading her way towards him, she
clasped his arm, without a word.
Meanwhile some police constables had entered the restaurant
hnd begun to eject the public. There was a stampede towards
the door; Jacques and Jenny were involved in it and hustled,
clinging to each other, out into the street.
A man who had been parleying with the police officer outside
managed to thrust his way past them into the restaurant.
Jacques recognized him as Henri Fabre, a socialist and an
old friend of Jaur^s. His face was pale, he was asking brokenly :
‘Where is he? Has he been taken to hospital?’
No one dared reply, but a hand pointed awkwardly towards
the interior. Fabre followed the indication with his eyes and
saw, in the centre of an empty space bathed in garish light,
what looked like a bundle of black clothes laid on a marble
slab, as dead bodies are laid out in the Morgue.
In the street, an emergency squad of police was trying to
disperse the crowd that had collected and was blocking the
thoroughfare. Jacques saw Jumelin and Rabbe talking ex-
citedly to a police officer. Dragging Jenny in his wake, he
pushed his way through to them. They had just come from
the newspaper office and had themselves seen nothing, but it
was from them he learned that the assassin had fired point
blank at Jaur^s through the open window and taken to flight,
but had speedily been captured by members of the public.
‘Who is it? Where is he?’
‘At the Rue du Mail police-station.’
581
SUMMER, 1914
‘Come along,’ Jacques said to Jenny.
There was a crowd outside the police-station. In vain Jacques
showed his pressman’s pass; no more persons were being
allowed in.
They were about to go away when Cadieux dashed out of
the police-office, hatless. Jacques managed to grab his arm as
he ran past. Cadieux swung round and stared blankly at Jacques
for a moment without recognizing him, though they had been
talking to each other near the Humaniti offices only an hour
or so before. At last he pulled himself together.
‘Ah, it’s you, Thibault. Well, there’s the first blood shed, the
first victim. . . . Whose turn next?’
‘Who was the murderer?’ Jacques asked.
‘His name is Villain. Nothing’s known about him. I saw
him just now; quite a young fellow, twenty-five or so.’
‘But why kill Jaur^s? WhyV
‘A patriot no doubt. A hothead.’
He freed the elbow Jacques was holding, and started off
again at a run.
‘Let’s go back there,’ Jacques said.
Clinging to Jacques’ arm, tense and silent, Jenny did her
best to keep in step.
‘You must be dead tired,’ he said. ‘Supposing I leave you
to rest somewhere? I’ll come back for you later.’
She was worn out with the day’s activities and emotions,
but the thought of parting company with him at such an hour
was unbearable. Without replying, she pressed herself more
cjiosely to him. He did not insist; this warm living presence
at his side helped him to fight down his despair; he, too, did
not relish the idea of being left to himself.
The night was sultry, hot fumes were still rising from the
sun-baked asphalt. All the streets round the Rue Montmartre
were thick with people. Traffic had ceased. Every window was
festooned with downward peering faces. Strangers accosted each
other as they passed. ‘Heard the news? Jaur^s has just been
murdered?’
A cordon of police had gradually cleared the pavement along-
side the ‘Croissant’ and now was busy keeping back successive
582
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
waves of sightseers pouring up from the boulevards, where the
tragic news had spread like wildfire.
As Jacques and Jenny came to the corner, a troop of mounted
police came trotting from the Rue Saint-Marc. They began by
clearing the approaches to the Rue des Victoires, as far as the
Bourse. Then they deployed in the centre of the street facing
the restaurant, and, swinging their horses round, began pres-
sing back the crowd towards the house-fronts. In the resulting
confusion, while the more timid spirits were scattering up side-
streets, Jacques and Jenny managed to edge their way into the
front rank. Their eyes were fixed on the dark frontage of
the restaurant, where all the iron shutters were down.
Policemen were posted at the door; now and then it
opened for a moment as a police officer went in or out, and
there was a brief glimpse of the brilliantly lighted interior.
The cordon parted to make way for a couple of taxis and
some official cars. The men alighting from them were saluted
by the officer in charge and at once entered the restaurant.
The door closed behind them immediately, while their names
or titles were passed round in an undertone by those ‘in the
know.’ ‘That was the Chief Commissioner.’ ‘Dr. Paul.’ ‘The
Prefect of the Seine.’ ‘The Public Prosecutor.’
At last, clanging its bell persistently, an ambulance van
drawn by one small horse, came trotting down the Rue des
Victoires. There was a sudden lull in the noises of the crowd.
Police officers directed the ambulance to the entrance of the
restaurant. Four attendants jumped out and went inside,
leaving the big door open at the back of their van.
Ten minutes passed.
The crowd was growing restless. ‘What the hell are they up
to in there?’ ‘They have to draw up a formal report — don’t
you know? — and it all takes time.’
Suddenly Jacques felt Jenny’s fingers tighten on his sleeve.
Both leaves of the door stood open. Silence fell on the crowd.
M. Albert stepped forth on to the pavement. Swarming with
the black forms of policemen, the interior of the restaurant
was a blaze of light, like a mortuary chapel. The black forms
drew aside, making way for the stretcher. It was covered with
583
SUMMER, 1914
a table-cloth. Four men, bare-headed, carried it; Jacques
recognized them as Renaudel, Longuet, Compere-Morel and
Theo Bretin.
Instantaneously, all across the street, every head was bared.
From an upper window a single timid cry floated up into the
darkness. ‘Death to the assassin !’
Slowly, in a silence so deep that the footfalls of the bearers
were clearly audible, the white-hung stretcher crossed the
pavement, swayed for a moment in mid-air, then abruptly slid
forward into the darkness of the van. Two men sprang in after
it. A police officer climbed on to the seat beside the driver.
The door was slammed to. Then, as the horse broke into a
trot and, escorted by policemen on bicycles, the ambulance
started clanging its way towards the Bourse, there rose a sudden
clamour like the roar of an angry sea, that drowned the jangling
of the bell; it was as though at last flood-gates had fallen,
releasing the pent-up emotions of the crowd. ‘Jaur^s !’ ‘Jaures !’
‘Jaur^s !’ ‘Jaures for ever !’
‘Now,’ Jacques whispered in Jenny’s ear, ‘let’s try to get to
the “//ama.” ’
But the crowd around them seemed rooted to the Spot, unable
to tear their eyes off the dark, mysterious fagade, still guarded
closely by the police.
‘Jaures . . . dead !’ Jacques murmured brokenly. And, again,
after a pause : ‘So Jaures is dead ! Somehow I can hardly
believe it. And still less imagine what the consequences will be.’
Gradually the serried ranks of bystanders were loosening;
it was getting possible to make a move.
‘Come,’ Jacques said.
The problem was how to get to the Rue du Croissant. The
roads directly leading to it were certainly in police occupation,
and closed to the public.
‘Let’s try a detour,’ Jacques suggested. ‘We can take the Rue
Feydeau and then turn into the Passage Vivienne.’
No sooner had they left the ‘Passage,’ a quiet side-street, and
entered the seething Boulevard Montmartre, than a sudden
onrush drove them helplessly forward.
They had blundered into a patriotic demonstration; a pro-
584
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
cession of young men waving flags and bawling the Marseil-
laise was marching down the boulevard, filling its whole width,
and driving all before it.
‘To hell with Germany! Hang the Kaiser! Next stop —
Berlin!’
Swept almost off her feet, Jenny felt herself losing her
balance. She pictured herself wrenched from Jacques and
trampled under foot, and gave a faint scream of terror. But
then she felt his arm round her waist, steadying her, pressing
her closely to him. Somehow he managed to steer her athwart
the torrent into the backwater of a doorway. The door was
closed. Half blinded by the dust raised by the marching crowd,
deafened by the noise and terrified by the frenzied, gaping
faces brushing past hers, she suddenly caught sight of a brass
knob on the door, just within reach. Summoning up what little
energy remained to her, she stretched forth her arm and grasped
the knob with all her might. A moment later and she would
have fallen, fainting, on the pavement. As it was, her eyes
closed, but her fingers did not relax their grip. She heard
Jacques panting in her ear: ‘Hang on! Don’t be alarmed. I’m
holding you.’
Some minutes passed and at last it seemed to her that the
tumult was ebbing into the distance. She opened her eyes and
saw Jacques’ heartening smile. The human torrent was still
driving past them, but in fitful waves, more slowly, and the
shouts had ceased. These people were not taking part in the
demonstration, but following out of curiosity. She was still
trembling aU over, and could not get back her breath.
‘Stick it out !’ Jacques smiled. ‘You can see — it’s almost over
now.’
She pressed her hand to her forehead, and, straightening
her hat, discovered that her veil was torn. Absurdly her first
thought was : ‘What ever shall I say to mamma !’
‘Let’s try to get away,’ Jacques said. ‘Do you feel strong
enough to move?’
Their best plan was to follow the stream and turn at the
first side-street. Jacques had given up his idea of going to the
Humaniti office, though it had cost him a brief pang of annoy-
585 u*
SUMMER, 1914
ance. But to-night something of his old self had changed — now
that a frail, infinitely precious being had trustfully surrendered
to his care. He realized that Jenny’s nerves were frayed to
breaking-point, and his one thought now was to get her safely
back home. And Jenny no longer put a bold front on it, or
said, ‘Don’t bother about me !’ but hung on his arm, and let
him guide her steps. The way she leaned upon him, with all
her weight, told Jacques that, though she would not own to
it, she was dropping with fatigue.
Walking slowly, they reached the Bourse, without having
seen a taxi. Roadway and pavements alike were crowded with
pedestrians. All Paris seemed out in the streets that night.
News of the crime had been flashed on to the screen at all
the picture-houses, in the course of the performance, and the
audience had left in a state of consternation. Everybody they
passed was talking loudly, on the same subject. Jacques caught
scraps of conversation. ‘The railway-stations are in military
occupation to-night.’ ‘Why are they so behindhand? Why
didn’t they mobilize before this?’ ‘Well, as things are, nothing
short of a miracle can save the situation.’ ‘I wired to-day to
Charlotte to tell her to come back to-morrow with the chil-
dren.’ ‘I says to her; “My good woman, if you’d a son o’
twenty-two, perhaps you wouldn’t talk like that !” ’
Newspaper-boys were zigzagging across the crowd. ^Murder
of four Is. Latest Details’
No taxis were at the rank in the Place de la Bourse. After
getting Jenny to sit down on the stone plinth of the railings,
Jacques remained standing beside her, staring at the flagstones.
‘Jaur^s is dead !’ he murmured.
He was thinking: Who’s to meet the German delegate to-
morrow? And who’s left to lead us now? Jaures was the one
man who would never have lost hope. The only man whom
the government could never have contrived to gag. The only
one, perhaps, who might even now have put a stop to
mobilization.
The lighted windows of the Bourse Post Office, into which
belated customers were hurrying, cast a yellow glow on the
pavement. It was there he had come to send the telegram to
586
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
Daniel, on the night when Fontanin lay dying, the night Jenny
had come back into his life. Less than a fortnight ago ! . . .
The special night editions of the papers on the newspaper-
stall flaunted alarming headlines : ^All Europe under Arms.^ ‘ The
War-Clouds Gathering.' ‘Germany on the War-path. Cabinet will
decide to-night on Measures to be Taken.'
A drunk man staggering past them let out a maudlin cry
‘No war! We don’t want war!’ — and it struck Jacques this
was the first time he had heard such a cry to-night. It would
have been rash to jump to any wide conclusion. Still, the fact
remained, and he duly noted it : neither the sight of murdered
Jaures’ body nor the warcries of the patriots on the boulevard
had elicited a single cry of protest from the crowd — the self-
same crowd that yesterday in every public demonstration was
still protesting loudly against war.
An empty taxi passed on the far side of the road. Some people
signalled to it. Jacques dashed across, jumped on the running-
board, and had the driver draw up in front of Jenny.
They flung themselves into it, without a word. The day’s
emotions had been overwhelming, and their nerves were on
edge as if they had narrowly escaped an accident. Here at last
was a haven from the outside world. Taking Jenny in his arms,
Jacques strained her to his breast. Exhausted as he was, he
felt a sort of paradoxical exhilaration, a zest for life that he
had never known before.
‘Jacques dear,’ Jenny whispered in his ear. ‘Where will you
spend the night?’ Then very quickly, as if she had learnt the
words by rote, she added ; ‘Gome to our place. You won’t be
in any danger there. You can sleep on Daniel’s sofa.’
He did not reply at once. Very tenderly his fingers toyed
with Jenny’s hand, and now it was not only soft and yielding
as in the past, but warm with feverish, exultant life, returning
his caresses.
‘All right,’ he said.
It was only some minutes later, at the foot of the staircase,
when, following Jenny, he realized that instinctively he was
walking on tip-toe as he passed the concierge’s room, that he
consciously took stock of the situation and, with it, of the proof
587
SUMMER, 1914
of love and trust that Jenny was giving him. She was alone
in Paris and, without her mother’s or her brother’s knowledge,
had proposed he should spend the night in the flat with her.
Jenny, he supposed, must be feeling the same discomfort that
he himself felt at this moment — only far more acutely. He was
mistaken. Jenny had thought it out, had satisfied herself that
in acting as she now did she was doing right — and no other
considerations weighed with her. Since their encounter with
the police, she had been trembling for Jacques. The hope that
he would agree to take shelter in her mother’s flat had become
an obsession with her. This project, which a week earlier she
would have judged unthinkable, had rooted itself so firmly
in her mind that she had lost sight of its temerity; her only
feeling now was one of gratitude to Jacques for having assented
so promptly.
No sooner were they inside the flat than she pulled off her
hat and gloves, and settled down to work. Her fatigue seemed
to have vanished as if by magic ; she fell to making tea, tidying
up Daniel’s room and laying sheets on the sofa that was to be
Jacques’ bed.
Jacques vainly protested; finally he had to prison her wrists
to stop her.
‘Now, my dear,’ he smiled. ‘We’ve had quite enough of it !
Do you realize it’s nearly 2 a.m.? I’ll be gone at six. I’m
going to sleep on the sofa in my clothes — if I sleep at all,
which isn’t very likely.’
‘Anyhow,’ she pleaded, ‘do let me give you a rug.’
He helped her to arrange the cushions and connect a bedside
lamp with the wall-plug.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to think about yourself, forget
that I’m here, and sleep, sleep soundly. Promise?’
She nodded affectionately.
‘To-morrow morning,’ he went on, ‘I’ll slip out quietly,
without waking you. I want you to have a really long night’s
rest. Who knows what to-morrow has in store for us? I’ll come
back after lunch and give you the news.’
Again she nodded.
‘Good night,’ he said.
588
FRIDAY, JULY 3I
Standing in this room so full for him of vivid memories, he
took her gently in his arms. He could feel the light pressure
of her breast on his, and as he drew her closer to him, she
swayed a little and their knees met. Both felt the same faint
thrill, but he alone was conscious of it.
‘Hold me,’ she sighed. ‘Hold me closer.’
She had flung her arms round Jacques’ neck, and carried
away by an uprush of emotion, was kissing him passionately.
And the audacity of innocence made her the more reckless
of the two. It was she who pressed him back towards the bed,
on to which they sank, still in each other’s arms.
‘Hold me close,’ she repeated. ‘Closer — still closer,’ and to
hide the emotion on her face reached to the table and switched
off the lamp.
Jacques was trying to keep control of himself, but he knew
now that Jenny would not go to her room; they would spend
the night together. ‘We too !’ he thought in a flash of cruel
lucidity. ‘We’re just like all the rest!’ A vague chagrin, an
access of despair, came over him, mingling with his desire.
But then his thbughts grew blurred in an ungovernable rapture,
his breath came in quick gasps, and he clasped her in a fierce
embrace that the kindly darkness redeemed.
A sudden thrill sped through his body, taking him unawares,
leaving him breathless, incapable of movement. Then gradually
his limbs relaxed, his breath came back. With a feeling of
deliverance, and a brief pang of shame as well — with a
rankling sense of loneliness and regret — he came back to
self-awareness.
Meanwhile Jenny remained nestling in his arms, lost in
an ecstasy of love, unthinking, all a fond desire that this
wonderful moment should never, never end. Her cheek lay
on the roughness of his coat, and the muffled beating of his
heart so close to hers throbbed in her ear like the low echo
of a dream. Moonlight — or was it the first pale glimmer of
dawn? — was flooding through the open window, bathing the
room in a milky sheen, a spectral radiance in which walls and
furniture, all opaque and solid things, seemed to have suddenly
become translucent. And after the tempestuous hours they had
589
SUMMER, 1914
lived through together, to sleep, to sleep in each other’s arms,
had the glamour of a quiet landfall.
He was the first to close his eyes. She heard him murmur
some faint, faltering words through a last kiss, and then with
a thrill of inexpressible emotion felt him falling asleep upon her
breast. For a little while she held weariness at bay, trying
to keep conscious of her happiness a little longer, and when
at last she too sank into oblivion, it was with an exquisite
sensation of surrendering not so much to sleep as to her lover.
40
Saturday, August i
JACqUES AT THE ‘hUMANIT^’ OFFICES .
jAcquES woke first. For several minutes, while slowly
consciousness returned to him, he lay gazing with rapturous
eyes at the beloved face, on whose young beauty lay but the
faintest traces of the excitements and exhaustion of the day
before.
The half-parted lips seemed hovering on a smile, and on the
peach-bloom smoothness of her cheeks lay, like faint strokes
of an artist’s brush, the frail, translucent shadows of her eye-
lashes : it cost him an effort not to press that silken smoothness
with his lips. Gingerly he shuffled over to the edge of the
couch, and swung himself off without disturbing her repose.
As he stood up he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror
^his rumpled clothes, ashen cheeks and tousled hair. The mere
possibility that she might see him in such a state sent him
hurrying to the door. None the less, before leaving, he took
some sprays of sweet-peas from the vase on the chimney-piece,
590
SATURDAV, AUGUST I
placed them on the couch beside her, where he had been
lying, then tip-toed from the room.
It was just after seven, on Saturday, August ist. A new
month was beginning, the holiday-maker’s month. What would
it bring forth? War? Revolution? Or peace?
The day promised to be a fine one.
He decided to visit the baths next door to the Closerie des
Lilas, in the Boulevard du Montparnasse. On his way he bought
the morning papers.
Several of these, the Matin for instance, and the Journal, were
printed on one sheet only. War economy already? They were
packed with information for the benefit of those called to the
colours — what to do in certain emergencies, and the like.
The day’s issue of the Humamte had come out as usual.
Deeply edged in black, it gave full particulars of the outrage.
Jacques was surprised to find amongst its contents a sympathetic
letter from M. Poincare to Jaures’ widow.
At a time when national unity is more vital than ever,
it behoves me to . . .
As it happened, Jacques knew for a fact that Mme. Jaures was
out of town and that the dead leader’s friends had decided to
postpone making arrangements for the funeral until she came
back. Obviously, therefore, the letter had been communicated
directly to the Press by Poincare himself With what motive?
Jacques wondered.
A stirring proclamation signed by.Viviani on behalf of the
Cabinet laid much stress on the fact that ‘in these anxious
days Jaures had endorsed the Government’s patriotic measures
with his personal approval.’ The concluding paragraph held
a discreetly veiled threat. Tn the grave crisis which has befallen
the nation, the Government has confidence that the patriotism
of the working classes, and the entire population, will lead
them to maintain a calm demeanour and refrain from causing
further apprehensions in the mind of the public by any agita-
tion of a nature calculated to bring disorder into the life of
Paris.’ Was the Government in fear of riots? In a gossip column
Jacques read that when M. Malvy, the Minister of the Interior,
591
SUMMER, 1914
was apprised of the murder, at the Cabinet Council, he at
once rushed off from the council room to his own Ministry,
so as to keep in touch with the Prefecture de Police.
All the papers, moreover, with a unanimity that suggested
they were acting under orders, dwelt upon the necessity of
sinking political differences, and without exception made the
murder a pretext for extolling ‘the lead given to his party by
the great Republican,’ and insisting on the fact that shortly
before his death he had endorsed the Government’s action in
‘taking the necessary measures of precaution to meet an emer-
gency of a most formidable nature. . . .’ Anyone reading
these passages would be led to suppose that the voice now
silent for ever has never been raised for any other purpose than
to promote the nationalist policy of France.
The move was both a subtle and dastardly one. Now that
the adversary was laid low, it was the height of ingenuity to
seize upon his dead body, to make of it a symbol of loyalty
to the Government, to use it as a weapon — a spear-head in the
fight against the now leaderless Socialist Party. ‘I shouldn’t
wonder if they go to the length of giving him a state funeral,’
Jacques muttered to himself
The news-sheets were sodden with the steam from his bath ;
he rolled them up into a ball and tossed it ragefully into a
corner before plunging into the tepid water.
‘That being so,’ he said to himself, ‘we’ve got to look things
squarely in the face.’
Obviously the jingoists were gaining ground at such a rate
that it now seemed impossible to keep up the struggle. Jour-
nalists, school-teachers, writers, scientists, the intelligentzia —
all vied with each other in abjuring their critical independence,
in preaching the new crusade, inciting all to hatred of the
hereditary foe, urging blind obedience, and preparing men’s
minds for the futile holocaust. Even in the papers of the Left,
the ^lite of the popular leaders — who only the day before were
loudly proclaiming with the full weight of their authority that
this monstrous struggle between the States of Europe would
only be an amplification of class war on the international plane,
another triumph of the fuglemen of profiteering, competition
592
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
and private ownership — all now seemed willing to put their
influence at the service of the Government. One or two did
have the grace to make some halting reservations. ‘Our dream
was too ambitious to come true,’ and so forth. But they had
capitulated, one and all; they now declared that national
defence was the bounden duty of all citizens, and were already
urging their working-class readers to co-operate with a clear
conscience in the deadly work. Their collective default opened
the flood-gates to a spate of patriotic propaganda and bade
fair to uproot in the minds of the masses, already wavering in
their allegiance, that instinct of revolt which Jacques had
counted on till now as the one and only hope of preserving
peace.
Yes, he reflected with a bitter sense of helplessness, they’ve
made their preparations with diabolical skill. War is possible
only with a nation worked up to fever-pitch. First men’s minds
are mobilized ; then it’s child’s-play to mobilize the men them-
selves. He recalled a public meeting he had once attended. Was
it Jaures, or Vandervelde, or another leader, who, addressing
an audience eager for words of reassurance, had likened the
individual action of each revolutionist to the cartloads of rubble
which, from father to son, generations of dwellers by the sea
tip out along the shore. ‘The sea breaks over them,’ he had
cried. ‘The waves disperse each mound of dust. But every
cartful leaves a small residue of heavy stones, which the sea
does not sweep away. And thus the heap grows higher year
by year, till in the fullness of time the ridge of stones has risen
to a massive breakwater, on which the raging seas take no
effect; a solid causeway along which future generations will
march ahead triumphantly.’ Bold metaphors, which at the
time were frantically applauded by the audience. But, Jacques
thought, when this tidal wave that’s coming has swept over
us, what will be left of all our paltry dykes?
But then he reproached himself for his faintheartedness.
What right had he to give way to despair? The battle’s never
lost so long as the best of us stand to our guns and refuse to
cringe to that tyrant of the will — determinism. Events are
as we shape them. We should never lose hope, whatever hap-
593
SUMMER, 1914
pens. It’s up to us to fight to the end against all that saps our
confidence, to sterilize the virus of collective panic. Nothing
is lost as yet.
But he felt terribly alone. Alone as those who cling tena-
ciously to an ideal must be alone. And yet his very isolation
gave him a curious feeling of security. For, whatever his distress,
he knew he was right, that he was fighting for the truth, and
no power on earth could make of him a renegade.
Without returning to -Jenny’s flat, he hurried over to the
offices of the Humaniti.
The building had the aspect of a house of mourning.
Early though it was, staircases and passages were thronged
with militants coming and going; but all the zeal had gone
out of their faces, giving place to looks of profound dejection
and distress. The murderer’s name was being passed from
mouth to mouth : Raoul Villain. Nobody seemed to know him.
Was he of unsound mind? Or an agent of the nationalists?
Who had incited him to the crime? When taken to the police
station, he had professed himself unable to account for his act.
A sheet of paper found in his pocket bore the words: ‘The
country is in danger; let the criminals atone.’
Like the rest of the staff, Stefany had stayed up all night.
His cheeks were ashen pale and his beady black eyes blinked
incessantly, as the result of hours of weeping and a sleepless
night.
A dozen socialists were conversing excitedly in his room.
News had come in that von Schoen, the German Ambassador,
had ventured on an incredible demarche at the Quai d’Orsay,
with a view to inducing France to remain neutral and with-
hold her military support from Russia. Germany, it was alleged,
undertook in return not to make war on France, provided the
French Government, as a pledge for France’s neutrality, would
allow her to occupy the forts of Toul and Verdun during the
whole of the campaign against the Russians.
A few of those present, men like Burot and Rabbe, suggested
that this eleventh-hour bargaining provided a means, after all,
of keeping France out of the war. But the majority somewhat
unexpectedly came forward as champions of the Franco-
594
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
Russian alliance. Young Jumelin, in a tone which reminded
Jacques of Manuel Roy’s patriotic outbursts, put in a heated
protest,
‘It would be the first time in history that France failed to
honour her signature !’
Burot , promptly sprang to his feet.
‘Excuse me !’ he cried, ‘but I must say you’re off the rails
there! Only have a careful look at the order of events, the
dates of the successive mobilizations. I’ll even leave out of
account what we may happen to know about the military
preparations the Russians set on foot quite a while ago — secretly,
of course — and have gone on with ever since, in spite of all
the efforts made by France to stop them. Let’s consider for the
present only the official pronouncements. Well, the Czar’s
ukase was signed on Thursday afternoon; he was fully aware
of the solemn warning that had been given by Germany, in
good time and in perfectly plain terms, that mobilization by
Russia would mean war. On Thursday, mind you, the day before
yesterday. Now Francis Joseph, for his part, only signed his
decree on Friday, that’s to say yesterday, late in the morning.
Then, yesterday too, but several hours later, Germany pro-
claimed the Kriegsgefahr — which we all know is not the same
thing as a general mobilization. That’s the correct order of
events. And indeed no secret’s made about it,’ he added,
taking a newspaper from his pocket. ‘On the admission even
of a Government organ such as the Matin, the Russian general
mobilization preceded the Austrian general mobilization.
There’s no getting behind that, and it’s a fact of much impor-
tance. History, I expect, will look on it as the decisive fact.
Unquestionably Russia must be regarded as the aggressor
nation. Well’ — he paused for a moment, then went on in a
slow, emphatic tone — ‘I’m as deeply concerned as any one of
you for the honour of France. But I hold that these proved
facts would amply justify France, to-day, in withholding her
support from Russia. And what’s more, I hold that such a
refusal to stand by the aggressor state, would enable our
Government at long last to prove in a dramatic and decisive
manner that they aren’t, and never have been, out for war.’
595
SUMMER, 1914
There was a brief silence, and something like a sudden
revival of hope.
Even Jumelin could not think of any objection to raise. But,
as he was not inclined to own he was mistaken, he gave the
discussion a new turn.
‘We’ve been talking about treaty obligations incurred by
France. Have we any clear idea of what they’ are? Who can
say what further obligations Poincare, led on by Isvolsky,
hasn’t let us in for during the last two years?’
‘And what was the Foreign Minister’s reply?’ Jacques asked.
‘I suppose, needless to say, he regarded it as being a “trap”
and turned it down? That’s the line our Foreign Office always
takes in such cases !’
‘If not as a “trap,” ’ Cadieux, who prided himself on being
well-informed, replied, ‘anyhow as a veiled provocation, in
fact a kind of ultimatum.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘Obviously, to oblige France to show her hand then and
there. Everybody knows the German General Staff’s plan of
campaign is to gain a decisive victory on the French Front
in the first week or so, which would then enable them to swing
round their army to the eastern front. It’s essential, therefore,
that Germany should be able to attack France at the earliest
moment. And that’s why the Germans are trying to jockey
France into war before actual fighting has begun on the Russo-
German front.’
Stefany had for some time been showing signs of restiveness.
Now his strident voice cut short the discussion.
‘Damn it, you’re all arguing as if war was already declared,
or going to be declared any minute ! And you are doing this
just when French and German Socialists are getting into closer
touch than ever before ; just when the coming of Muller — he’ll
be here to-night — is goingf to give us a chance at last of taking
really drastic and decisive action.’
All fell silent. For an eerie moment it was as if the shade
of Jaur^s were hovering in the room. Stefany had used the
very words the ‘Skipper’ would have used. It was borne in on
them that the sending to Paris of an official delegate of German
596
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
Social Democracy at such an hour, for the purpose of con-
cluding a pact between the peoples, despite their Governments,
was an unprecedented event, justifying the wildest hopes.
‘What fine fellows these Germans are!’ cried Jumelin. And
his boyish confidence, following so closely on the pessimistic
views that were being aired a moment before, was to Jacques
a further proof of the confusion reigning in their minds.
The entrance of Renaudel created a diversion.
His cheeks were pale and puffy, and his eyes expressionless.
He had spent the night keeping vigil over his friend’s body.
He had come to attend a hastily convened general meeting
of the Federation Socialiste de la Seine, taking place that morning
in the Humanite office. Its object was to review the situation
created within the Party by the disappearance of its leader.
And he wished, before the meeting, to have a talk with Stefany
about an appeal just issued by the Trade Union Congress.
At Lyons, at Marseilles, at Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen
and Lille — everywhere, in fact, as he averred — demonstrations
were being organized. ‘No,’ he exclaimed, clenching his fists,
‘we mustn’t give up hope.’
The little group dispersed, and Jacques after looking in at
Gallot’s office and finding him away, walked downstairs to
the street. Before going to see Jenny, however, he decided to
find out what was being said and done in anarchist circles,
and to call at the Libertaire offices.
In the Place Dancourt he ran into the Cauchois brothers —
two stone-masons, whom he had often met at the Libertaire —
and they dissuaded him from going any farther.
‘We’ve just been there. Not a soul about. All the boys have
gone to ground. The cops are on the war-path. What’s the use
of getting nabbed?’
Jacques kept them company for a short distance. They
walked ahead aimlessly. For once they had downed tools,
‘because of what’s happening.’
‘What’s your idea about this rotten war?’ the elder of them
asked. He was a big, freckled, red-haired young man, with
rather coarse features ; this morning his light blue eyes had an
unaccustomed gentleness.
597
SUMMER, 1914
‘A damn’ lot he cares. He’s a Swiss !’ put in the younger
man who, though they were not twins, was the image of his
brother — but as the finished statue resembles the rough-hewn
block.
Jacques saw no point in going into details.
‘I’m afraid, I do care,’ he said gloomily. The youngster
turned to him with a friendly smile.
‘Of course, of course. But it ain’t the same for you ; you’re
not up against it like we are.’
The elder brother, who had no doubt been ‘having one or
two’ to celebrate his escapade, waxed talkative.
‘Oh, it’s simple enough, what we think. We’ve only one skin
apiece and we ain’t so keen on losing it. See? I don’t say but
what we’d risk our skins if we were called to fight for our
ideas. See what I mean? But as for fighting for them blasted
“patriots” as they call themselves, nothing doing. There’s
fellows who likes that sort of thing, I know; well let ’em go
ahead ! “You got to love your country,” they say. Well, our
country’s any place where there’s a chance of doing our job
in peace and quiet. Ain’t that so, Jules?’
The younger man emitted a non-committal whistle.
‘Well, then,’ Jacques asked, ‘supposing they do mobilize,
what are you going to do about it?’ (He was thinking of his
own case; the answer he had given to Antoine’s question:
‘What 6.0 you intend to do?’ had been quite straightforward.
He had no idea. All he knew was that he would struggle to
the end. But where? And with whom? And in what way? He
refused to let his mind dwell on it ; that would be like doubting
the certain victory of peace.)
The younger man shot a stealthy glance at his brother and,
as though fearing he might let his tongue run away with him,
made haste to put in :
‘Anyhow we’re not due to be called up till the ninth day.
That gives us time to look around a bit.’
The elder brother had failed to catch the other’s warning
look. He turned to Jacques and said in a low tone :
‘D’you know Saillavar? A chap with a pock-marked face.
No? Well, he comes from Port-Bou. See what I’m getting at?
598
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
He knows the Spanish frontier by heart, same as we know the
streets of Menilmontant.’ He gave a knowing wink. ‘In Spain,
even if there is a war, neutrality’ll be the ticket, so they say.
Once a fellow’s there it’s all plain sailing; there’s nothing to
prevent a man from turning an honest penny, like anyone else.
And as for work, we ain’t work-shy, are we, Jules?’
The younger brother gave Jacques a suspicious glance. His
blue eyes had a steely glint. He muttered :
‘Now don’t you ever go and repeat that, Thibault !’
‘No fear,’ Jacques smiled, as he shook hands with them.
In a brown study he watched them go ; then shook his head
despondently.
‘No,’ he murmured, ‘not that. That’s not for me. To cross
into a neutral country — there’s something to be said for it.
But if it’s only to “do your job in peace and turn an honest
penny,” while half the world’s being butchered — no !’ He took
a few steps, stopped again. ‘Then — what?’
41
Saturday, August /
ANNE TRIES IN VAIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH ANTOINE
Anne marched up to the telephone with a decided step.
But, as she was about to pick up the receiver, she paused.
‘I’m a fool. It’s twenty-past eleven; he’s still at the hospital.
Why not go and cateh him as he’s coming out? That way,
he can’t escape me !’
She remembered having given her chauffeur the morning
off. To save time and, still more, because she could not bear
the thought of waiting, she snatched up her hat and gloves,
599
SUMMER, 1914
lan to the door, and hailed the first taxi. ‘Drive to the Rue
de Sevres. I’ll tell you where to stop.’
The janitor at the hospital had not seen Dr. Thibault go
out yet. Anne glanced along the cars drawn up by the kerb.
Antoine’s was not amongst them. But he might very well have
parked it in the hospital yard, and, in any case, he did not
always use his car in the mornings.
She got back into the taxi and, leaning from the window,
kept close watch on the people coming and going through the
big gateway. Five to twelve. Noon. Twelve chimes from the
hospital clock, followed after a brief pause by twelve clangs
from a church near by. A stream of nurses and attendants
poured forth into the street.
Suddenly a cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She had
just remembered there was another way out of the hospital,
in a side-street. Hastily alighting, she hastened up it, after
telling the janitor to ask Dr. Thibault to wait, should he leave
by the main exit.
The narrow pavement seethed with a hurrying crowd, the
road was full of drays and lorries; all around her was the
nerve-racking din of a busy street at ‘rush hour.’ A fit of dizzi-
ness came over her, there was a buzzing in her ears — and, as
she shut her eyes and halted for a moment, she caught herself
thinking quite seriously: Who knows? Perhaps I’d be better
dead ! But at once she braced her nerves and, moving like an
automaton, continued on her way to the side-entrance.
‘Dr. Thibault? Yes, madam, he’s gone. He left some minutes
ago.’
Without even stopping to thank the man, she dashed away
like a demented woman. What was to be done? Another
telephone-call? But she’d rung him several times yesterday in
vain, and once again this morning, just after he’d left the flat
— so, anyhow, Leon had informed her. ‘So early?’ she had
asked him incredulously, for it was only a quarter-past seven.
She went back to the janitor.
‘Can I use your ’phone? It’s urgent.’
The line was not free and she had to wait for some time. At
last an answer came.
600
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
‘Dr. Thibault’s out, madam. He said he would not be back
for luncheon.’
Lion’s tone was studiously impersonal. Anne had come to
hate the man. She could no longer bear to hear that sleek,
deferential voice which always intervened between her and
her lover, and foiled her of the direct, living, almost physical
contact for which she pleaded helplessly over the line.
She hung up without a word and went out into the street.
There’s nothing for it, she thought. I’ll go there. Then I shall
know if they are lying to me.
First she had to find her taxi again. She threaded her way
through the crowd, in frantic haste, inwardly raging against
this weak surrender to the passion ravaging her heart, but
unable to withstand it.
‘4A, Rue de I’Universite.’
But no sooner did the tall facade, the gaudy blinds, the
portico of Antoine’s house, come into view at the far end of the
street than abruptly panic gripped her. She had visualized
Antoine rising from his luncheon-table, coming out to meet
her in the hall, napkin in hand, scowling. . . . What could she
say to him? Only: ‘I love you, Tony!’ And suddenly she was
seized with fear — fear of his frowning brows and stubborn
underjaw, of the look of irritation in his eyes, that she could
picture only too well. . . .
Why not write a letter?
‘ Stop at the post-office, please — at the corner.’
She asked for an express-letter form, scribbled a few lines.
Tony dear, I must see you, if only for a moment. Any-
\yhere, at any time you like. Ring me up. I’ll stay at home.
I must see you, Tony dear.
That phrase had been running in her mind all day. T must
see you.’ She felt sure that, could she but meet him once again,
even for a minute, she would find the words to win him back.
After slipping the note into the express-letter box, she
hurried home — heartily ashamed of herself. . . .
Antoine was still at table when the letter arrived.
Glowing with enthusiasm, Roy had been giving him a
601
SUMMER, 1914
description of the chauvinist demonstration in which he had
taken part the previous evening.
‘Yes, old chap,’ Antoine was saying, ‘I can well believe all
you tell me. I’ve only too good reasons for doing so. Just now
we’re indulging in an orgy of patriotism that takes one’s breath
away. But — do you know what they remind me of, all those
bright young friends of yours flag-wagging down the boulevards
to let the world know they approve of war?’
Leon handed him the note. As he recognized the writing, a
shadow fell on his face.
‘They remind me of a poster one used to see all over Paris
when I was a kid.’ While he spoke he was stripping off the
perforated band, his eyes fixed on Roy. Then he glanced at the
letter, tore it up at once into tiny shreds, and went on speaking.
‘The poster showed a flock of geese. They were making goo-goo
eyes at a cook armed with a long, pointed kitchen-knife. And
the inscription ran : Hurrah for the Strasburg Pate de Foie Gras!’
He strewed the flakes of paper on his plate, and fell silent.
No ‘explanation’ had taken place between Anne and him-
self. After his talk with Simon, Antoine had quietly let Anne
drop out of his life ; had given up visiting her, making appoint-
ments, or even answering her ’phone calls. These escapist
methods were unpremeditated and indeed went against the
grain — for Antoine was all in favour of clean-cut situations.
And it was his firm intention to ‘have things out’ with Anne, in
a decisive interview. Regarding which his memory was jogged
effectively several times a day; every time Leon accosted him
with lowered eyes and the masonic formula, ‘You’re wanted
on the ’phone, sir.’ But the hours passed, each fraught with
new anxieties, and in his rare spells of leisure from the calls of
his profession, he either plunged into a feverish perusal of the
newspapers or, with morbid complaisance, let himself be drawn
into confabulations with all and sundry — people who, like
himself, had lost the faculty of thinking or talking about any-
thing except war. Now and then he wondered at himself for
feeling no more than a hostile indifference towards a woman
whom he had no reasons to reproach and who only a week ago
(he was bound to admit) had still held so large a place in his life
602
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
He supposed that his case was an exception. It did not occur
to him that the same influences were everywhere at work. The
storm breaking over Euroi>e was disrupting private lives as
well ; human relationships founded in untruth were crumbling,
falling helplessly asunder. The first gust of the tempest sweeping
the world was already shaking from the boughs the tainted
fruit.
42
Saturday^ August i
JACQUES LUNCHES WITH JENNY AT HER FLAT
J A c Q,u E s was back at Jenny’s place some minutes before
noon. She was not expecting him so early. Rather guiltily she
confessed that she had slept soundly till nine. Since then she
had been poring over the papers, trying to find out what
exactly was happening in Austria. Her voice shook when she
referred to her mother’s plight in ‘Vienna. Rising, she took
some steps across the room, burying her face in her hands.
He wondered how to reassure her without lying. To the
burden of anxiety imposed by world events was added this
frail, personal distress so nearly touching him, and for a while
the motives urging him to fight a losing battle in the cause of
peace were reinforced by his eagerness to bring peace to
Jenny’s troubled mind.
‘Do sit down,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear to see you standing up
like that, darling, looking so miserable. All is not lost yet, you
know.’ He conjured up a heartening smile.
She asked nothing better than to believe him, and he launched
out into an enthusiastic description of Stefany’s indomitable
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SUMMER, 1914
hojjefulness, of Muller’s mission and all that might come of it.
Carried away by his own words, he went so far as to suggest
with all but unfeigned fervour :
‘Who knows? Perhaps it’s a good thing the whole world has
been led to the brink of this catastrophe ! For it may well bring
about that vast swing-round of public opinion which is what
we’re aiming at.’
‘Yes !’ Jenny cried, her eyes intent on his.
Then again her nerves got the better of her, she went to the
window and began fidgeting with the blind. So abrupt were her
gestures that the cord snapped in her hand.
He went up to her, put his arm round her shoulders and
pressed her to him.
‘Now, dear, keep calm — no, don’t look away. You can’t
imagine the good it does me being with you ! I’ve come here
to take breath a little, to get a new lease of energy. And I need
your help. I need all your confidence.''
Jenny’s expression changed at once, she smiled bravely up
at him.
‘Splendid ! Now, put on your hat and we’ll go out and have
some lunch.’
‘Why not have lunch here?’ The cheerfulness in her voice
took him by surprise, so unforced it seemed. ‘Do say “Yes.”
I’ve some eggs and peaches in the larder, and we can drink tea.’
He smiled assent.
Gaily she ran to the kitchen and lit the gas-ring. Jacques
followed and, momentarily forgetting his anxieties, watched
her laying the table, aligning knives and forks and spoons,
neatly disposing pats of butter in the butter-dish — ^with the
application that all women with the housekeeping instinct
bring to the most trivial domestic rites. How supple and
spontaneous were her least gestures ! Love had weaned her from
her stiffness, set free that womanly grace which until now some
secret inhibition had held in leash.
‘Our first meal at home !’ she remarked with a certain
earnestness, while placing the eggs on the table.
They sat at opposite ends of the table, and it was as if they
had faced each other thus for years. She was in high spirits,
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SATURDAY, AUGUST I
which he did his best to reciprocate, but. the look of care
remained. Seeing her steal a furtive glance at him, he smiled.
‘It’s awfully nice here.’
‘Isn’t it!’ she cried enthusiastically, and added: ‘We need
each other more than ever, in times like these.’
Suddenly he thought of the days to come, and panic gripped
his heart. He could not meet her eyes.
For some reason they could not shake off the silent mood that
had enveloped them. Now and again Jacques’ eyes rested on
Jenny in a long, lingering gaze of tenderness and, unable to
find words to express his feelings, he reached across the table
and pressed her hand for a few moments.
His moodiness distressed her. During these last days a change
had been coming over her ; for the first time, despite the studied
reticence that had become a second nature with her, she
would have welcomed a chance of talking about herself. The
hours she spent alone were one long silent monologue addressed
to Jacques, in which she dissected her character and laid bare
to him unflinchingly her faults, her capacities and her limita-
tions. For she was obsessed by the dread that he had formed
a wrong opinion of her and would be hideously disappointed
later on, when he came to know her better.
When they had eaten their dessert, she had him fold his
napkin, and handed him Daniel’s napkin-ring. Then, taking
his arm, as she had used to take Daniel’s, she led him back to
her room.
The drawing-room door was ajar, and as they passed it
Jacques caught sight of the piano lit up by a sunbeam and,
seized by a sudden fancy, halted.
‘Jenny, do play for me that — that piece, you know the one
I mean. The one you played — that evening.’
‘What was it?’ She knew quite well what he meant, but this
abrupt recall of their summer at Maisons-Laffitte had played
havoc with her composure. Then ‘Oh Jacques!’ she cried,
‘Not — not to-day !’
‘Please . . . !’
She yielded, entered the room, seated herself at the piano
and, haunted by memories of one of the most emotionally
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SUMMER, 1914
tragic evenings of her life, began playing Chopin’s Third
Etude.
Jacques moved behind her so as to be out of her sight and
stood there in a coign of shadow, with folded arms. His eyes
fast shut to veil his tears, his heart melting with remembered
rapture, he heard the song of infinite joy, infinite regret, rise
trembling on the silence. When the last note was played she
rose, stepped back and leaned against him.
‘Forgive me,’ he whispered in her ear. Never before had she
heard such an extremity of anguish in his voice.
‘Why?’ she asked in alarm.
‘We might have been so happy, you and I, and since so
long . . .’
A tremor shook her body. Quickly she laid her hand upon
his lips.
She drew him gently to the open window and out on to the
balcony. Below, the tree-tops wove a close-set canopy of green
above the avenue, and from it rose now and again, like the
twittering of a flight of sparrows, the merry voices of unseen
children. In the distance the leafage of the Luxembourg
Gardens was already taking on the faintly burnished sheen that
precedes by a few weeks the russet panoply of autumn.
Jacques gazed with unseeing eyes at the sunbright panorama.
His obsession had returned and he was thinking that Muller
must have just left Brussels.
Then he heard Jenny saying in a low, pensive tone ;
‘I know every tree. And I know every seat beneath those
trees, every line of every statue. My whole childhood’s linked
up with that garden.’ After a short pause she added: ‘I like
remembering things — do you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he answered bluntly.
She turned and gazed at him, suddenly abashed.
‘Neither does Daniel.’ There was a hint of disapproval in
her voice.
Feeling he must explain his words, Jacques brought himself
to say :
‘For me the past is past. Each day I’ve lived through drops into
oblivion; I’ve always kept my eyes turned towards the future.’
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SATURDAY, AUGUST I
The remark wounded her more cruelly than she dared tell.
The present meant so little to her, and the future nothing;
memories were the focus of her inner life.
‘You can’t mean it, Jacques! You say that just to make
yourself s^em different from others.’
‘Different from others?’
‘No,’ Jenny took herself up, blushing, ‘that’s not what I
meant. . . .’ She pondered for some moments. ‘Don’t you some-
times feel a desire to — to mystify people? Not just for the joy
of baffling them, of course. But so as to slip through their fingers.
Isn’t that so?’
‘What do you mean by — “to slip through their fingers”?’ He
thought it over, then confessed : ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. I
must say I loathe feeling that people have a cut-and-dried
opinion of me. It’s as if they tried to pin me down, to circum-
scribe my mind. And I daresay I do sometimes mystify people
deliberately — just to prevent their pinning me down in that
way.’
It struck him that Jenny had compelled him to take stock of
himself — as he certainly would not have done on his own
initiative. Now he felt grateful to her, and no less angry with
himself for having wounded her by professing a cheap scorn for
the sentimentalities of memory. His arm tightened round
her waist.
‘I hurt you just now. I’m sorry; I talked like a fool. Naturally
times like these play the devil with one’s nerves !’ He smiled.
‘And now, to excuse my stupidity a bit, shall we say that
Jenny is a little girl who’s . . . extraordinarily sensitive?’
‘Yes, that’s so,’ she replied at once. ‘I’m disgustingly sensitive.’
After a moment’s thought she added : ‘Thin-skinned — but not
a bit good at heart !’
Jacques gave an incredulous smile.
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I know myself only too well. Every time
I do something that makes me seem kind-hearted, I do it
deliberately, after thinking it over — as an act of duty. I haven’t
a scrap of natural, spontaneous kindness — the only kindness
that counts. Mother’s, for instance.’ She was on the point of
adding: ‘And yours, too, Jacques,’ but kept silent.
607
SUMMER, 1914
He shot her a puzzled glance. He had an impression that
some aspect of her had matured with surprising suddenness.
Never did she seem to him so puzzling as when she analysed
herself aloud. At such moments her face grew set and hard,
and her eyes steely ; and Jacques had a feeling he was losing
contact, that she had turned to stone : an obdurate, enigmatic,
sphinx-like Jenny whose secrecy galled his masculine self-
esteem.
In a low voice he said :
‘Jenny, you remind me of an island, a sunny smiling island
— but quite inaccessible !’
She gave a start.
‘Why do you say that? It’s not fair!’
A cold, dank air seemed to blow between them, chilling her
blood. For some moments they stood in silence, leaning on the
balcony rail, their minds estranged, lost in dark forebodings.
. . . Then two slow, distant chimes sounded from the Senate-
House clock. Jacques glanced at his watch and straightened up,
‘It’s two.’ His obsession had returned to him. ‘Miiller is on
his way.’
They went back into the flat. He had not suggested she
should accompany him and she, too, had said nothing about
it. Yet he was not at all surprised — so natural did it seem —
when she called to him, as she ran into her room.
‘Just a minute, dear, and I’ll be with you.’
Jacques decided this time to take Jenny with him into the
Humanite building. On one of the landings they met Rabbe, and
Jacques’ first inquiry was what arrangements had been made
for meeting the German delegate and when his train came in.
At five o’clock, Rabbe said, adding that all socialist members
had been convened to meet him in one of the reception-rooms
of the Chamber of Deputies at six o’clock. It was expected that,
by reason of its crucial importance, this conference would last
well on into the night.
‘We’re all going to meet him at the Gare du Nord,’ the old
militant announced.
‘We’ll go there, too,’ Jacques said, turning to Jenny.
The mere name of the railway station had suddenly evoked
608
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
in her mind a picture, clear in every detail, of her encounter
there with Jacques, her flight along the passages of the Under-
ground Railway, their talk in the little garden beside the
church. Naively convinced that the same thoughts had risen
in Jacques’ mind, she turned and looked at him. But he was
engrossed in conversation with Rabbe, asking what resolutions
had been passed that morning at the meeting of the Socialist
Federation.
‘None!’ old Rabbe growled indignantly. ‘The committee
broke up without having come to any decision. The Party’s
leaderless now.’
The various departments of the newspaper were humming
with activity. In Gallot’s room Pag^s, Cadieux and others were
engaged in a discussion. A rumour had gone round that, ever
since the German declaration of Kriegsgefahr, the French
General Staff had been pestering the Government to issue
orders for mobilization without more ado, and it was only a
matter of hours. Pagfes went further and, on the authority of
an army clerk employed in General Joffre’s office, stated that
the Order in Council had actually been signed by Poincare at
noon. But Cadieux who had just returned from the Foreign
Office, declared that the news must be false.
‘Else I’d be sure to have heard of it,’ he boasted.
He said that the chief topic of conversation at the Foreign
Office just now was the attitude of England. According to him
Caillaux and some other politicians of his group intended to
ask the French socialist leaders to approach Keir Hardie, with
a view to getting the English Socialist Party to retract their
insistence on British neutrality. Meanwhile, he said, Poincare
had taken it on himself to write directly to King George V,
urging the necessity of England’s declaring herself on the side
of France — since in British intervention lay the last hope of
preserving peace.
‘When did Poincare send the letter?’ Jacques inquired.
‘Yesterday.’
‘Exactly! When he knew that the Russian mobilization had
been officially announced, and war had become inevitable.’
No one challenged the statement.
609
x
SUMMER, 1914
A communique, presumably official, had been issued in the
course of the morning, to the effect that the French and British
General Staffs were keeping in close touch and ‘a plan of
action had been drawn up.’ Was military action meant? Any-
how there was good authority for the report that the British
Admiralty had ordered the fleet to patrol the Straits of Dover,
that merchant ships were prohibited from entering the naval
bases, the forts commanding these bases had been manned at
full war strength, and that the coastal lighthouses had been
forbidden to light up that night.
Marc Levoir came in.
According to him another interview had taken place between
Viviani and von Schoen. The former had said : ‘Germany’s
mobilizing; we know it.’ When the ambassador made no
reply, Viviani had added (so Devoir’s informant told him) :
‘Our attitude is necessarily dictated by that of Germany.
Nevertheless, to prove to the world our resolute desire to avert
a war. General Joffre has issued orders to our troops to with-
draw to a minimum distance of ten kilometres from the
frontier. Thus if any “incident” occurs, it will be none of
our making.’
Pag^s, who had friends in the War Office, made haste to
qualify this statement. He asserted that the withdrawal from the
frontier had no real significance; as a concession to the cause
of peace it was mere eyewash, for it did not interfere in any
way with the plan of campaign drawn up by the French
General Staff. In certain ministerial circles (so Pages said),
they made no secret of the fact that this temporary retirement
was no more than a piece of skilful diplomatic tactics, a device
for impressing European opinion — above all, British opinion.
‘I’m quite ready to believe,’ Jacques said, ‘that one of their
ideas is to enlist the sympathies of England. But personally I
think it’s voe, the pacifists of France, whom they are getting at
in the first instance. They’re out to cut the ground under our
feet, to trade on our feelings, and have us think their hands are
clean of war-guilt. Also it’s an honourable pretext they’re
affording us for sinking our scruples and collaborating with the
powers that be, now they’ve shown themselves so peacefully
610
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
inclined. Yes, I can guess already what we’ll be reading
to-morrow in the opposition Press.’
Indifferent to the talk going on around him, Gallot had
continued sorting out a pile of documents stacked on the table.
Now, more hedgehog-like than ever, perking up his head
behind the paper rampart, he said :
‘And what proves it is the mighty hurry the Government was
in to inform the leaders of the Party about this move — before
they’d even made it.’
His peevish tone, taken with his insignificant appearance —
puny arms and legs, and the look of a petty bureaucrat with a
chronic cold-in-the-head — tended to make him sound uncon-
vincing, even when eminently right. Just now, Jacques noticed,
indignation had not quelled in his eyes their look of profound
sadness, which lent pathos to the face, for all its ugliness.
A group of young militants burst in. A report had just gone
round that the League of Patriots had organized a procession
which was heading for the Place de la Concorde, for a demon-
stration in front of the Strasburg statue.
‘Shall we go?’ Pag^s asked.
Everyone was already on his feet. As a matter of fact they
seemed less eager to engage in a ‘scrap’ with their adversaries,
than to snatch at an opportunity for doing something at last.
Jenny had a feeling that Jacques was anxious to accompany
them, but holding back on her account.
‘Let’s go there,’ she said resolutely.
43
Saturday^ August i
ORDERS ARE POSTED FOR GENERAL MOBILIZATION
Sunlight, dulled by a sultry haze but fierce as ever, beat
down on people’s heads, raising the temperature in the heart
6ii
SUMMER, 1914
of Paris to furnace heat. More and more perturbed, and
wrought-up like flies by the thunder in the air, the populace
seemed unable to quit the streets. The police were busy trying
to disperse, without recourse to violence, the excited crowds
that had gathered outside banks, police-stations and municipal
buildings. The yells of newspaper-vendors, piercing the low-
pitched clamour of the streets, rasped nerves already strained to
breaking-point.
At the Place des Pyramides the plinth of Joan of Arc’s
statue was heaped with flowers, like a catafalque. The
arcades in the Rue de Rivoli were densely thronged with
people hurrying in both directions. Most shops had their shutters
down. The traffic in the street was as intense as at the height
of the shopping season. The Tuileries Gardens, however, were
deserted but for a detachment of mounted police, drawn up
under the trees ; as the horses stirred, glossy flanks and burnished
helmets dappled the green shade with sudden gleams.
Evidently the news of the projected demonstration was
incorrect, for nothing unusual was happening in the Place de la
Concorde. The traffic had not been diverted, and only quite a
small police cordon barred the approaches to the Strasburg
statue, which, too, was banked with wreaths ribboned in the
national colours.
Regretfully the little band of Humanite stalwarts dispersed.
Jacques and Jenny turned up the crowded Rue Royale.
‘It’s half-past four,’ Jacques said. ‘Let’s go and see Muller
arrive. If you’re not too tired we might walk along the boule-
vards to the Gare du Nord.’
Suddenly, as they were walking past the Madeleine, a jangled
clamour broke out overhead; the big church bell was tolling,
rending the air with its punctual, solemnly reiterated clang.
All the people in the street stopped dead, exchanging
puzzled glances ; then, with one accord, started running
blindly forward.
‘What is it?’ Jenny cried apprehensively— Jacques had gripped
her by the arm. ‘What ever is happening?’
Someone beside them muttered : ‘It’s come !’
Near and far, odier belfreys were giving tongue; Saint
6i2
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
Augustin, Saint Louis d’Antin, Saint Roch, the Holy Assump-
tion, And soon the lowering sky seemed like a dome of bronze
lugubriously tolling in every quadrant, to the same stubborn
rhythm, the passing-bell of a generation.
‘What ever is happening?’ Jenny asked again. ‘Where are
they all running?’
Without a word, he drew her on to the roadway across
which hundreds of people were flocking, regardless of the
traffic.
A steadily increasing crowd was massing on the far side, out-
side the Madeleine post-office. A slip of white paper had just
been stuck on the window, from the inside. But Jacques and
Jenny were too far away to read it. They heard people round
them exclaiming: ‘It’s come!’ Those in the front rows stood
for some moments peering up at the notice in a sort of dazed
absorption, as if they were laboriously spelling it out. When
presently they turned their heads, their eyes were aghast,
their faces haggard, clammy with sweat. Some, without a word,
without a glance for anyone, forced their way through the
group and made off, their chins sagging upon their chests.
Others shook their heads mournfully and with misted eyes
searched the faces round them for a look of fellow-feeling;
then, after murmuring some desultory phrases which met with
no response, tore themselves reluctantly away.
At last Jacques and Jenny worked their way to near the
window. A small rectangular sheet was fixed to the pane by
four pink sealing- wafers ; on it was an inscription in an imper-
sonal copperplate script, a woman’s handwriting, neatly
underscored with a ruler :
GENERAL MOBILIZATION
THE FIRST DAY OF MOBILIZATION IS
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
Jenny pressed to her breast the hand that Jacques had slipped
beneath her arm. He stood stock still, thinking like all the rest :
‘Well, it’s come !’ Then other thoughts came racing through
his mind, and with them a sense of wonder at feeling so little
613
SUMMER, 1914
distress. Had it not been for the bells pounding their tocsin on
his brain, he might have felt a certain relaxation of the nerves
— ^like the physical relief that presently, after the long day of
brooding storm, would come with the first drop of rain. A
spurious respite that lasted, only for a second or two, the respite
of the wounded man who at the first shock does not realize
that he is injured. But after a moment the wound opens, begins
to bleed, and pain comes into its own ; Jacques felt a stab of
anguish pierce his heart. He clenched his jaws, but Jenny
heard him give a hoarse groan.
Jacques, oh Jacques . . -
He would not speak. He let her lead him away from the
crowd, to an empty bench at the pavement’s edge. They sat
down in silence. People were still flocking up to the post-office
window, and over the seething mass of heads, stared at the
fateful slip of paper, unable to take their eyes off it.
So it had come to this! For weeks he had lived in a fool’s
paradise, fondly trusting that justice, truth, and man’s fraternity
would triumph in the nick of time. His attitude had been, not
that of the visionary expecting a miracle, but that of the
scientist awaiting the results of an infallible experiment. And
now — ^his world had tumbled about his ears. A cold, disdainful
rage swept over him. Never had he felt so mortified. Not so
much outraged or discouraged, as baffled and humiliated
— humiliated by the masses’ feebleness of purpose, by the
incurable futihty of human nature, the ineffectiveness of
Reason. And I, he thought, what am / now to do? In a vivid
rush of introspection he explored the secret places of his heart,
the hinterlands of consciousness, trying to find a clue, a presage,
the glimmer of a guiding light. In vain. And, with the know-
ledge of his helplessness, something like panic came upon him.
Jenny deferred to his silent mood. Without speaking, with
mingled curiosity and dread, she watched the scene around
her. She had only the vaguest ideas of what was meant by
mobilization or, for that matter, war. Yet her thought? had
harked at once to her mother and Daniel; but principally to
Jacques. Still, she lacked imagination to picture with any
clearness what war might mean for these three loved ones.
614
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
When at last she spoke, her whispered question was an echo
of Jacques’ thoughts.
‘What are you going to do?’
Her voice was calm, unshaken; Jacques found himself
thinking : How splendidly she’s facing up to it ! But he was too
cast down to reply. He averted his eyes, and mopped his
perspiring forehead.
At last he rose from the bench.
‘We may as well go to the station, I suppose.’
All the afternoon, huddled in an easy chair beside the tele-
phone, Anne had been hoping in vain for a call from Antoine.
Time and again her hand strayed towards the receiver — but,
though her nerves were frayed to snapping-point, she had kept
to her resolve not to ring up first, but wait for him to call her.
A newspaper lay at her feet. What she had read in glancing
through it had exasperated her. What did it matter to her,
this nonsense about Austria, Russia, Germany! Fanatically
absorbed in her own troubles, she kept on picturing the scene
she meant to have with Antoine once they were together in
their little room. And each time the picture rose before her she
eked it out with fresh details, thought up new things to say,
fiercer and fiercer taunts to hurl at him — with a sense of
momentary relief. And then, suddenly, her anger fell, she
begged him to forgive her, flung her arms round him, drew
him towards the bed.
A door banged near by, there was a sound of hurrying feet.
Instinctively she glanced at the clock; twenty to five. The door
opened, her maid rushed in.
‘Oh ma’am, Joe says they’ve just stuck up the mobilization
orders at the post-office. There’s going to be a war.’
‘Really?’ Anne drawled.
She repeated to herself ‘there’s going to be a war’ without
fully grasping what it meant. First came an irritating thought :
‘Simon will be coming back.’ Then: ‘They’ll send him to the
front — and a good riddance !’ Suddenly, her mind went dark
with horror. ‘My God, if there’s a war, Tony will have to go.
He’ll be killed.’ She sprang up from the chair.
615
SUMMER, 1914
‘Get me my hat, gloves. Look sharp ! Send for the car !’
In the glass above the fireplace she caught sight of her
reflected self: peaked nostrils, crow’s-feet. No, she thought
despairingly, I’m looking really too hideous to-day !
When the maid returned Anne was sitting again in the arm-
chair, hunched forward, her hands locked between her knees.
Without straightening up, she said gently :
‘Thanks, Justine, but I’ve changed my mind. Tell Joe I
shan’t want him. Get a bath ready, please. Very hot. And make
the bed ; I’ll try to rest a bit.’
A few minutes later she was lying in the twilight of her
bedroom. The curtains were drawn. The telephone was within
reach; if he called, she had only to stretch out an arm. Yes,
bed was the best place ; cool, soft sheets were the best anodyne
for her distress. Obviously she could not expect to feel really
well all at once ; it would need half an hour or so for her pulse
to steady down, the fever to die from her blood, a gentle
drowsiness to numb her brain. Only — what an appalling, impos-
sible effort was needed to lie quite still, with fast-shut eyes,
without a flutter of the eyelids, waiting, waiting . . . ! Tony
. . . ! War . . . ! Ah, if only she could see him again, win him
back . . . !
She jumped out of bed, and ran stumblingly, barefooted, to
her boudoir, pressing her hands to her face. Without troubling to
draw up a'chair, she knelt on the carpet beside the desk, snatched
a sheet of paper from the rack and scribbled frantically :
I can’t bear it any longer, Tony. I’m suffering too dread-
fully. I can’t bear it. You may have to go. When? You’ve
cut me out of your life. Why? What have I done? Tony
dear, I must see you. To-night. At our place. I’ll be waiting
for you there all the evening, all night. Come at your own
time. Only — do please come. I’ve got to see you again.
Promise that you’ll come. Please, please come, my Tony.
She rang for the maid.
‘Ask Joe to take this note immediately. Tell him to deliver
it himself at Dr. Thibault’s flat.’
It struck her then that Simon might well have taken the
morning train, in which case he might be turning up at any
moment. She dressed rapidly, and left the house.
616
SATURDAY, AUGUST- I
To Steady her nerves she forced herself to go all the way on
foot, her impatience notwithstanding, to their flat in the
Avenue Wagram. Though she could not have given a reason
for it, she was sure, this time, that Antoine would come.
She entered ‘their place’ by the private door in the side-
street. Just as she was turning the key in the lock she ‘sensed’
that he was there, and smiled to herself, so convinced was she of
her clairvoyance. Closing the door soundlessly, she tiptoed
across the rooms, the doors of which stood open, and called in
a low voice, ‘Tony! Tony!’ But the bedroom was empty.
Obviously he had heard her and was hiding in the bathroom !
She ran into the bathroom, into the kitchen. Then wearily
dragged herself back to the bedroom and sank on to the bed.
Antoine had not come yet — but ‘he will come,’ she murmured.
Slowly she undressed. First she took off her shoes, then with
a long, swift, sliding gesture — like the peeling of a fruit —
stripped off her stockings, laying bare the silken smoothness of
her skin. Thinking she heard footsteps, she looked round. No,
he had not come yet. Her eyes slowly roved the room and
settled on the bed. One of her delights was to wake early in the
morning and at her leisure pore on the beloved face, the un-
wrinkled forehead, the lightly parted lips relaxed in slumber,
with all the harshness gone out of them — gentle as the lips of
a child. Only at such moments did she feel that he was truly
hers. ^My Tonyr Well, he was coming to her now. She was
certain, absolutely certain. He would come to-night.
She was not mistaken.
44
Saturday, August i
JACQUES AND JENNY WITNESS MULLER’s ARRIVAL AT THE
GARE DU NORD
The Gare du Nord was in military occupation. At every turn
one came on red-trousered groups and pyramids of piled arms ;
booking-hall and station-yard echoed with words of command,
617 X*
SUMMER, 1914
the clatter of rifle-butts. Civilians, however, were allowed to
enter, and Jacques had no trouble in making his way, accom-
panied by Jenny, to the platform.
Some sixty members of the militant left wing had come to
meet the train. Each, as he greeted a comrade, muttered the
now familiar epitaph of peace — ‘Well, it’s come!’ — ^with an
angry toss of the head and, clenching his fists, exchanged a look
of indignation with his friend. But under this too easily con-
trolled violence one could discern already symptoms of fatalistic
resignation; as if all were thinking, ‘It was bound to come.’
‘What would the Skipper have made of all this?’ old Rabbe
sighed, after shaking Jacques’ hand in silence. ‘What would he
have done?’
‘I expect great things of the conference with Muller.’ Jacques
sounded cofindent enough ; he had pledged himself to hopeful-
ness, and stood by his resolve.
At the far end of the platform a small, isolated knot of men
stood apart from the rest : the delegation of socialist deputies.
Followed by Jenny and Rabbe, Jacques made his way past
the various groups, without joining any. With a faraway look,
like one speaking in a dream, he murmured :
‘I’m thinking of the man who’s coming to us from Germany
at this most tragic hour, and of all the terrible responsibilities
he may well have to shoulder. When he left Berlin the day before
yesterday, he had no idea of the turn events would take. Then,
stage by stage, on his journey towards Paris he learnt of the
Russian mobilization, the Austrian mobilization, the Kriegsge-
fahrzustand and — this morning — of Jaures’ assassination. And
now, when he alights from the train, he’ll be told that France
is mobilizing. And, as the last straw, he’ll probably be told
to-night that orders for general mobilization have been issued
in Germany as well. It’s appalling !’
When at last the engine loomed up across a haze of vapour,
di iving billows of steam before it, a ripple of excitement passed
down the crowd waiting on the platform ; all, with one accord,
moved forward. But the station staff were evidently on the
look-out for this; lining up at once, they stemmed the rush,
allowing only the parliamentary delegation to proceed.
618
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
Jacques saw them gather outside a carriage, on the footboard
of which two men were standing. One he recognized at once as
Hermann Muller. The other, whom he did not know, was a
well-built, youngish man with a determined-looking face
which gave an impression of energy and straightforwardness
Jacques turned to Rabbe.
‘Who’s the man with Muller?’
‘Henri de Man, a Belgian. A very fine fellow, with no non-
sense about him. The sort of chap who uses his brains and never
knows when he’s beaten. Didn’t you see him at Brussels on
Wednesday? He speaks German perfectly, as well as French,
and he’s probably going to act as interpreter.’
Jenny laid her hand on Jacques’ arm.
‘Look! They’re letting people through now.’
They hastened towards the official group, but a ffood of
outgoing passengers barred the way, and when they had
managed to get past the platform barrier, the parliamentary
deputation whose task it was to take Muller at once to their
private conference at the Chamber, were already out of sight.
In the booking-hall a number of people were gathered round
a notice that had just been posted. It was headed, in block
letters :
Regulations Applying to Aliens
Someone behind them gave an ironical guffaw.
‘Looks like our folk weren’t caught napping anyway! They
must have had these notices printed all ready in advance.’
Jenny looked round. The speaker was a young workman in
blue overalls, a cigarette between his lips. A pair of stout,
brand-new, hob-nailed boots dangled across his shoulder.
‘You too!’ a bystander remarked, pointing to the boots.
‘You weren’t caught napping neither !’
‘Aye, mate,’ the workman chuckled as he moved away.
‘Them boots is going to give old Kaiser Bill one on his fat
German a . . . !’
There was a burst of laughter. . . . Jacques had not stirred,
his eyes were fixed on the notice, his fingers tensely gripping
619
SUMMER, 1914
Jenny’s elbow. Now with the other hand he pointed to a
paragraph printed in thicker type.
Aliens, without distinction of nationality, are permitted to leave
the fortified area of Paris up to the close of the first day of mobil-
ization. They will be required, on leaving, to produce their
identity papers for examination by the railway police authorities.
A host of thoughts were coursing through his brain. Aliens
. . . !’ The parcel he had left at Jenny’s flat still contained the
false passport that had served for the Berlin adventure. Even
if he produced his certificate of exemption from military
service, Jacques Thibault, as a French subject, might well have
trouble getting through to Switzerland. Whereas there should
be nothing to hinder the Genevan student, Eberle, from
returning to his country before ‘the close of the first day of
mobilization’ — to-morrow, Sunday.
And suddenly he thought : What’s to become of Jenny, if I
leave before to-morrow night?
He had put his arm round her shoulders and was steering
her out of the crowd.
‘Listen,’ he said abruptly, ‘I’ve absolutely got' to go and see
my brother.’
Jenny had scrupulously read the passage in thick type
beginning ^Aliens . . .’ But what, she wondered, was there to
make Jacques suddenly so upset, and why should he be in
such a hurry to see Antoine?
Jacques himself could hardly have' explained his motive. It
was to Antoine that his first thought had turned when he
heard the great bell at the Madeleine sounding the alarm.
And now, on seeing that notice, across the chaos of his thoughts
he had suddenly grown aware of an urgent, irrational craving
to see his brother again.
Jenny had no mind to question him. This railway-station
and indeed all this relatively unfamiliar part of Paris were
associated for her with that eventful evening when she had
seen Daniel off, and with her panic flight from Jacques ; and
the flood of memories had overwhelmed her.
In an hour’s time the look of the city had changed con-
620
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1
siderably. There were as many people about, if not more, but
no loiterers. Everyone they saw was in a hurry, intent solely
on his 'own concerns. It was as if each passer-by had suddenly
discovered a host of problems to be solved without delay,
arrangements to be made, a job to be handed over, friends
and relatives to visit, an eleventh-hour reconciliation to essay, or
a rupture to be consummated. Their eyes fixed on the ground,
with tight-set lips and troubled faces, all were hurrying along,
swarming out across the roadway, dodging and doubling
through the traffic, which had perceptibly diminished. There
were very few taxis, most drivers having garaged their cars and
gone home at once. Buses had ceased running ; public conveyances
of all kinds had been requisitioned as from that evening.
It was a struggle for Jenny to keep up with Jacques, but she
did her best to hide it. Like everyone else, he was hurrying
ahead, his face tense, his chin well forward, as if escaping from
some dread pursuer. Though she had no inkhng of his thoughts,
she guessed that he was grappling with some inner problem.
In point of fact the sight of the mobihzation order had
crystallized certain ideas which had been floating in his mind
and of which till now he had been almost unaware. A sudden
memory of the Pilot had flickered into his consciousness, as he
had seen him in the bedroom at the Brussels hotel, in blue
pyjamas, with haggard eyes, standing in front of a mound of
ashes in the grate. He had had no news since Thursday last;
often he had wondered what Meynestrel was doing ‘over there.’
Up to his ears, no doubt, in revolutionary work. ‘Aliens are
permitted to leave Paris. . . .’ In Geneva, at the Pilot’s side
he would find a group of energetic men who had kept their
loyalties, their single-mindedness, intact. He pictured Richard-
ley and Mithoerg and the others as a dauntless phalanx, an
islet of resistance in the midst of Europe under arms. The temp-
tation to hurry back to Switzerland was strong. Yet he could
not make up his mind. Was it on Jenny’s account? he asked
himself. Yes — but Jenny was not the real cause of his irre-
solution. Had he any qualms about being a ‘deserter?’ None
whatever ; on the contrary, his first duty was to refuse to serve
in defending all that he had never ceased to loathe and fight
621
SUMMER, 1914
against. No, what galled him was the thought of scuttling to
cover, while others took their chance of death. He realized
that he could never feel at peace with himself unless in standing
out he took personal risks equivalent to those his brothers under
arms were bound to take. What then should he do? Give up
the idea of seeking refuge in a neutral country, and remain
in France? But how make active war on war, defy the war-
lords, in a country under martial law, where every form of
pacifist propaganda would be ruthlessly suppressed, where he
would be suspected, watched by the police, and perhaps thrown
into prison to keep him muzzled? Unthinkable! What then?
Obviously Switzerland was the solution, but what was he to
do there?
‘Merely to be oneself is nothing!’ he exclaimed vehemently.
Then he caught Jenny’s puzzled look and added : ‘Being oneself,
thinking this or that, believing this or that, is futile. Futile,
so long as one can’t transmute one’s life and thoughts and
faith into acts’
‘Into acts?’
She had an impression that she had misheard him; almost
necessarily what he meant lay outside her range.
‘This is what I think,’ he went on in the same harsh, emphatic
tone. ‘I think that this war is going to hold up the inter-
nationalist ideal for many years to come. For many, many
years ; perhaps for generations. Well, if there was some definite
act that could be done, to save our ideal from this momentary
setback. I’d do it. Even if it were an act of sheer despair. But
what act?’ he muttered despondently.
Jenny halted abruptly. ‘Jacques! You’re going away!’ Seeing
his eyes fixed on her, she added: ‘You’re going to Geneva,
aren’t you?’
He gave a vague nod.
She was torn between conflicting feehngs, joy and distress.
If, she thought, he goes to Switzerland, he’ll be safe. But how
shall I live without him?
‘If I do leave Paris,’ Jacques said, ‘it will be to go to Geneva.
For one thing, that’s the only place where one can still try to
get something under way. For another thing. I’ve a false pass-
622
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
port which makes it easy for me to go back to Switzerland. . . .
You saw what that notice said?’
She broke in eagerly.
‘Go, Jacques ! Start to-morrow !’
The firmness in her voice took his breath away.
‘To-morrow?’
She could not stifle a little thrill of hope; his tone had
seemed to imply : No ; presently perhaps, but not to-morrow.
Jacques had started walking again. Her legs seemed giving
way beneath her, and she had to cling to his arm.
‘I’ll leave to-morrow,’ he said at last, ‘if— if you’ll come
with me.’
A rapturous tremor shook her body; the cloud of anxiety
had miraculously lifted. He was going away — he was saved!
And she was going with him • they were not to part I
Jacques fancied she was hesitating.
‘You’re free, aren’t you,’ he said, ‘with your mother unable
to leave Vienna?’
Her only answer was to press herself more closely to him.
Her heart was pounding away, she could feel its pulses throb-
bing in her temples, her head was swimming. She was his, body
and soul. They would never part again. She would be always
at his side, shielding him from danger.
Soon they were chattering about their departure as if it had
been fixed up long in advance. Jacques had forgotten the exact
time the night-express left for Switzerland — but there was sure
to be a time-table at Antoine’s place. Then they would have
to find out if Jenny could travel without a passport; the regu-
lations would surely be less strict for women. Next, they dis-
cussed the cost of their tickets ; between them they would have
enough and to spare, and at Geneva Jacques assured her, he
could ‘manage.’ Of course, he reminded her, everything still
depended on the outcome of the pourparlers with the German
delegate. Who could tell? Supposing suddenly, at the last
moment, the proletariat of both countries decided to launch
an insurrection . . . ?
They had come to the Tuileries Gardens without noticing
where they were going. Jenny was streaming with perspiration ;
623
SUMMER, 1914
she felt her muscles suddenly go limp. Timidly she pointed
to a bench hidden away amongst the flowers. They sat down.
They had the place to themselves. The storm which had been
brooding all the afternoon seemed to keep down the scent of
the flowers to the ground-level.
Jenny thought: I’ll be able to write to Mamma from
Switzerland. And as it’s a neutral country, she’ll be able to
come and join us there. . . . Already she was picturing her
home-to-be in Geneva, with her mother restored to her and
Jacques immune from danger.
Jacques’ thoughts were turning in the same dreary circle.
Obviously he must leave France. But — to do what? Try as he
might to stake his hopes on Meynestrel, and persuade himself
that at Geneva anyhow the spirit of revolution was still intact
and active, he could not help recalling the ‘Talking Shop,’ or
overcome his doubts as to the real efficacy of the tasks that
would be assigned to him once he was there.
Unable to sit still any longer, he said :
‘Come along, Jenny. You’ll be able to have a rest at my
brother’s place.’
She gave him a startled look.
‘Of course you must come,’ he smiled.
‘What? To your brother’s place? Don’t you think . . .?’
‘Oh, what does anything matter now? And anyhow Antoine
had better know. . . .’
He seemed so sure of himself, so determined, that she made
no further protest and followed him submissively.
45
Saturday, August i
JACQUES BRINGS JENNY WITH HIM TO VISIT ANTOINE
I N the hall lay an officer’s uniform-case, brand-new, the price-
ticket Still attached.
624
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
‘The Doctor’s in, sir,’ Leon said as he opened the door of
the consulting-room.
Jenny entered without hesitation.
There was silence in the room. Jacques saw his brother
standing at his desk. His first impression was that Antoine was
by himself; then, to his disappointment, he espied Studler and
Roy rising from the large arm-chairs in which they had been
entrenched, Roy’s at the window and Studler’s some way off,
beside the book-shelves. Antoine was sorting out papers; the
wastepaper-basket under the desk was full, and scraps of torn
paper littered the carpet.
He went up to Jenny and shook her hand paternally, with
no indication of surprise. That day no one was surprised at
anything. Moreover he remembered that Mme. de Fontanin
in the note she had sent after Jerome’s funeral to thank him
for his visits to the Nursing Home, had mentioned that she
was going away. He assumed that Jenny, left by herself in
Paris, had come to ask him for advice; probably she had run
into Jacques on the staircase.
As the two brothers’ glances, met, the rush of affectionate
emotion that came over both showed itself only in a vague
quick smile, no more than friendly in appearance but charged
with undertones of feeling. For, despite all that estranged them,
never had they felt so near in spirit to each other; not even
at their father’s deathbed had they been so vividly aware of
the mysterious response of blood to blood. They shook hands
in silence.
Antoine, after drawing forward a chair for Jenny, had begun
to ask her about her mother’s journey, when the door opened.
Dr. Therivier entered, accompanied by Jousselin.
He went straight up to Antoine.
‘Well, it’s come ! And we can’t do a thing about it !’
Antoine did not reply at once. His look was earnest, almost
calm.
‘No, we can’t do anything about it,’ he repeated slowly.
Then smiled, for it was exactly what he thought himself, and
the thought was a rowel to his energy.
Antoine had been in Jousselin’s laboratory when young Roy
fi25
SUMMER, 1914
had burst in with the news of mobilization. He had not flinched,
had coolly lit a cigarette. For three days now he had felt no
longer a free agent, but an atom caught in the flux of world
events, helpless as a pebble in a load of gravel shot off a tip-
cart upon the roadside. All his world lay in ruins — his career,
his plans, the life he had mapped out so precisely for himself.
Yet at this moment he felt solidly at one with his country and
his class. Before him lay the unknown. The unknown ; but action
too. And this prospect, with all its stirring possibilities, had
promptly given him new heart to face the future. He had a
way of never protesting for long against what could not be
mended, the inescapable. An obstacle for him was a new datum,
setting a new problem to be solved. And there was no obstacle,
to his thinking, that might not, if a man rose to the occasion,
be used as stepping-stone to further progress.
‘When do you join up?’ Therivier inquired.
‘To-morrow morning, at Compiegne. What about you?’
‘The day after, Monday, at Chalons.’ He turned to Studler,
who had joined them. ‘How about you?’
Good humour was so much, a second nature with Therivier,
that even to-day his voice sounded cheerful and his plump
red-cheeked, bearded face had a jovial expression. But the
apprehension in his eyes made a painful contrast with it.
‘How about me?’ The Caliph’s eyelashes fluttered. The
question seemed to have roused him from a dream. He turned
towards Jacques as if it was to him that explanations were
due. ‘I’m off, too,’ he growled. ‘But a week later. I’m to report
at Evreux.’ •
Jacques refrained from looking at him. He did not blame
the Caliph, whose life, he knew, had been one long series of
self-immolations. And he knew, too, that by consenting to serve,
against his convictions, in this “defensive” war, this man, the
soul of loyalty, was obeying once again what he believed to
be the call of duty.
His eyes, roving the room in quest of Jenny, discovered her
standing a little apart from the others beside the fireplace. She
seemed quite self-possessed, but in a brown study. Presently
he saw her straighten up, look round for a chair, take a few
626
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
steps, and sit down. How lithe she is! he thought, and for an
ecstatic moment fancied he still was holding her in his arms.
He remembered her sudden, quickly repressed shudder, when
he had kissed her for the first time. And his senses tingled with
a fond delight, that he made no effort to restrain. Their eyes
met ; he smiled, and felt the colour rising to his cheeks.
Antoine, who had gone up to Jenny, was making inquiries
about Daniel, when Therivier broke into their conversation.
‘I say, Thibault, how are they going to replace you at the
hospital? What arrangements are being made?’
‘The older men are being asked to return to duty. At our
place Adrien, Daumas and even that old stick-in-the-mud
Delery have undertaken to replace the younger men.’ Sud-
denly he pointed an accusing finger at Therivier. ‘Look here,
you rascal! You’ve never brought back the notes that Jousselin
lent you the other day — the ones about “Vegetable Growths
and Glossoptosism.” ’
With a laugh Therivier called Jenny to witness.
‘He’s incorrigible! All right. I’ll send back your precious
manuscripts to Studlcr. So you can go on service with your
mind at rest, my budding M.O. !’
One of the windows stood open on the street and through
it for some moments sounds had been coming in of singing,
shouting, clattering horse-hoofs. There was a general move
towards the window and, taking the opportunity, Jacques went
up to his brother, who had stayed behind in the centre of the
room. But just then Antoine started across to join the others
and Jacques followed him.
A company of artillery coming from the Invalides had just
encountered a procession of Italian demonstrators marching
up the Rue des Saints-Peres, preceded by four drums and a
flag. The Italians had halted and were singing the Marseillaise
and cheering the troops. The drums were beating; the noise
grew deafening.
Antoine closed the window and stood for a moment lost
in thought, his forehead pressed to the pane. Jacques stayed
beside him. The others had gone back to the middle of the
room.
627
SUMMER, 1914
‘I had a letter from England this morning,’ Antoine said,
without moving his head.
•‘From England?’
‘Yes. From Gise.’
‘Oh !’ Jacques shot a quick glance at Jenny.
‘She wrote on Wednesday. She wants to know what to
do if there’s a war. I shall tell her to stay over there, at
the convent. That’s the best thing she can do; don’t you
think so?’
Jacques nodded vaguely. Then he looked round to see if the
others were out of earshot. He wanted to speak of Jenny and
was fumbling for an opening when Antoine turned abruptly
and gazed at him. A look of deep anxiety had settled on his
face. Under his' breath he murmured:
‘Are you still quite det-determined to . . . ?’
‘Yes.’ Jacques’ tone was firm, but devoid of any self-asser-
tiveness.
Antoine was still bending forward, shunning his brother’s
eyes, nervously tapping the window-pane to the rhythm of the
drum-beats receding up the street. He realized that he had
just stammered, always a symptom with him of profound
disquiet.
From the hall came Leon’s voice announcing:
‘Dr. Philip.’
Antoine drew himself erect at once, and a swift change came
over his expression.
Philip’s lanky, shambling form loomed in the doorway. His
twinkling gaze surveyed the room and settled on Antoine. He
was wagging his head lugubriously. Drawing a handkerchief
from his flapping coat-tails, he mopped his brow.
Antoine had gone up to him.
‘Well, Chief, it’s come !’
Philip touched his hand limply, without a word ; then, like
a marionette whose strings are suddenly let go, he seemed to
crumple up on to the nearest seat he could find — the end of
the settee, already swathed in dust-sheets.
‘When’re you leaving?’ he asked in his curt, hissing voice.
‘To-morrow morning. Chief.’
628
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
Philip’s lips emitted a little watery click as if he were sucking
a lozenge.
‘I’ve just come from the hospital,’ Antoine remarked to break
the silence. ‘Everything’s been fixed up. I’ve handed over to
Bruhel.’
There was a pause. His eyes fixed on the carpet, Philip was
shaking his head in an odd manner.
‘I suppose you realize, my dear boy,’ he said at last, ‘that
“it” may last a long time, many years in fact.’
‘A good many experts,’ Antoine ventured to observe, though
his tone lacked assurance, ‘maintain the contrary view.’
‘Do they?’ Philip snorted, as if he had long since made up
his mind about experts and their forecasts. ‘All of them base
their notions on cut-and-dried theories about food-supplies,
credit and so on. But suppose the Governments in power are
mad enough to stake their last farthing and risk utter ruin,
rather than give in! After what we’ve been witnessing during
the past week anything’s possible. No; personally I foresee a
very long war in which all the nations involved will wear them-
selves out and none will have the desire, or even the ability,
to call a halt.’
After a short pause, he spoke again.
‘Really the whole thing passes my understanding. Who’d
have believed that such a thing as this war was possible to-day?
Yet all that was needed, it seems, was for the Press to persist
in fogging the issues in people’s minds, with the result that no
one now has any clear idea who is and who isn’t the aggressor,
and every nation fancies its “honour” is at stake. A week of
imbecile scare-mongering, bluster and exaggeration has been
enough to set all the nations of Europe at each other’s throats,
like a band of lunatics, yelling blue murder! Yes, the whole
thing passes my understanding. It’s like the tragedy of Oedipus.
He, too, was forewarned. But when, on the day fixed by des-
tiny, the alarming events which had been predicted took place,
he failed to recognize them. It’s the same with us. Our prophets
had foretold everything; we knew exactly where the danger
lay — in the Balkans, in Austria, in Czarism and Pan-Ger-
manism. We were forewarned. We were on the watch. Many
629
SUMMER, 1914
sensible people did everything they could to stave off disaster.
And yet — it’s come! We couldn’t escape it. Why? I keep on
turning the question over in my own mind: Why? Perhaps
the answer is that amongst the events we had dreaded and
expected, some small unforeseen factor crept in, the merest
trifle, just enough to modify their aspect and of a sudden make
them unrecognizable. Just enough to enable Fate to spring its
trap, despite men’s vigilance. And now we’re caught in it !’
At the far end of the room Jousselin, Therivier, Jacques and
Jenny were sitting in a group round Manuel Roy. His cheerful,
boyish laugh rang out.
‘Oh, come now!’ he cried to Therivier. ‘You don’t expect
me to start waUing about it, do you? After these stuffy “labs,”
a breath of clean, fresh air will be a vast relief. We’re going
to live through exciting times !’
‘To Jousselin murmured.
Jenny, who had been gazing at Roy, averted her eyes ; the
look of exaltation on the young man’s face distressed her.
Philip who had caught the remark, turned to Antoine.
‘Young folk can’t imagine what it’s like. And that explains
a lot. I’m different; I went through the 1870 war. Young folk
don’t know.’
He took out his handkerchief again, passed it over his cheeks,
lips and beard, then dabbed with it his palms.
‘You younger men are going to the front,’ he said in a low,
brooding tone. ‘I suppose you think that old chaps like me are
lucky to be out of it. You’re wrong. Our lot is even worse than
yours. Because our lives are ended.’
‘Ended?’
‘Yes, my dear boy. Over and done with. July 1914 marks
the end of something of which we formed part; a new era is
beginning — in which we don’t “belong.” ’
Antoine gazed at him affectionately, but could find no
answer.
Philip fell silent. Then as if tickled by some joke that had
just crossed his mind, he gave a little reedy chuckle.
‘I’ve had three black moments in my career,’ he began, in
the prim, carefully enunciated tones he employed in the lecture-
630
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
room, and which led his pupils to say of him, “Old Sawbones
is listening to the sound of his own voice.” The first changed
the whole course of my youth ; the second bowled me over in
my middle years ; the third, I can see, will play the devil with
my old age.’
Antoine’s look was an invitation to his old friend to explain
himself.
‘The first was when the pious, provincial-minded youngster
I was then, found out one night, after reading the four Gospels
in succession, that they were a tissue of inconsistencies. The
second was when I realized that a certain poisonous fellow
named Esterhazy had done a piece of dirty work known as “The
Dreyfus bordereau,’’’ and that, instead of punishing the culprit,
the French authorities were bullying a wretched man whose
only crime was to have been born a Jew.’
‘And the third,’ Antoine put in with a melancholy smile,
‘is, of course, to-day.’
‘No, it came a week ago, when the papers published the
text of the ultimatum, and I saw the billiard-stroke that was
being prepared for, a cannon to be made at the expense of
millions of lives.’
‘A “cannon?” I don’t follow. Chief!’
Under the bushy brows Philip’s eyes twinkled with almost
cruel irony.
‘Yes, Thibault, a cannon that was the foulest of foul strokes.
There was a red ball, Servia, hit by a white ball, Austria,
which in its turn had been hit by “spot” — that’s to say Ger-
many. Who held the cue? Russia? Or, was it England?’ He
gave vent to his rageful, whinnying laugh. ‘I’d like to know
the truth before I die.’
Jacques came up to the corner where Antoine and Philip
were sitting.
‘Chief,’ Antoine said, ‘I’ve introduced my brother to you
already, I think?’
The old doctor shot a keen glance at Jacques.
Jacques bowed, then turned to Antoine.
‘Have you a time-table anywhere handy?’
‘Yes.’ Their eyes met. A question hovered on the tip of
631
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine’s tongue, but he merely pointed, saying : ‘Over there.
Under the telephone directory.’
‘And when are you joining your regiment?’ Philip inquired.
Jacques stiffened, hesitated, and cast a glance at Antoine
who stammered hastily:
‘Oh, my b-brother — it’s — er — not ... in his line.’
A short silence followed.
Had Philip understood? Did he remember the conversation
he had had with Jacques? He gazed at the young man with
extreme interest and, as Jacques moved away, followed him
with his eyes.
Antoine bent towards Philip.
‘My brother refuses on principle to serve in the army.’
Philip reflected for a moment. Then ‘All forms of idealism
are legitimate,’ he said in a weary voice.
‘No,’ Antoine interrupted. ‘In times like these a man’s duty
is perfectly simple, clear as daylight. No one has the right to
back out of it.’
Philip, who did not seem to have heard him, went on speaking
in his nasal drone.
‘ . . . legitimate and perhaps necessary. Could humanity
progress without mystical beliefs? Read your history again,
Thibault. No great social change has ever come about without
some religious aspiration underlying it. Intelligence can but
lead to inactivity. It’s faith that supplies the driving force to
get things done and the obstinacy men need for carrying on
with the good work.’
Antoine said nothing; in the Chief’s company he automati-
cally became the docile pupil once again.
Then he noticed Jenny standing by the fireplace beside
Jacques, studying the time-table. It surprised him for a
moment; then he assumed she must be looking up the trains
by which her mother might return from Austria.
Philip, meanwhile, had continued voicing his reflexions.
‘Who knows, Thibault? Perhaps those who think like your
brother are forerunners. Perhaps this war’s a necessary evil,
an upheaval of this Old World that will throw up a crop ol
new half-truths of which we have no inkling. It would be
632
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
pleasant to think so anyway. And why not? All the nations
of Europe will be compelled to fling their resources, material
and spiritual, lock, stock and barrel, into the melting-pot of
war. It’s an unprecedented phenomenon, and we can’t foresee
what will come of it. Who knows? Perhaps the whole structure
of our civilization will come out of the crucible recast in a new
form. Yes, men have some terrible experiences to go through
before the dawn of enlightenment — the day when they’re con-
tent humbly to avail themselves of what science has to tell
them for the ordering of their lives on earth.’
Leon’s clownish face peeped in at the half-opened door.
‘You’re wanted, sir.’
Antoine scowled, but rose from his seat.
‘Excuse me a minute. Chief.’
Leon stood waiting in the hall. Imperturbably as usual he
held out the letter tray, on which lay a blue envelope.
Antoine picked it up and thrust it into his pocket without
opening it.
‘The person wants to know if there’s an answer,’ the valet
murmured, his eyes fixed on the floor.
‘What person?’
‘The chauffeur, sir.’
‘No,’ Antoine said, turning on his heel. He had just heard
the door behind him open.
Jacques and Jenny entered the hall.
‘What? Are you off?’
‘Yes,’ Jacques replied in the same curt, peremptory tone
that Antoine had used a moment before when saying ‘No’ to
L^on. He gazed fixedly at his brother and in his eyes there
was a veiled reproach, a look that seemed to say: ‘So when,
on a day like this, we come to see you, you can’t find a moment
to accord us !’
Antoine said awkwardly :
‘Already? And you. Mademoiselle, have you, too, got to
leave now?’ His thoughts moved quickly: if Jenny had come
to ask for his advice or help, why was she hurrying off without
mentioning it — and with Jacques?
He ventured on a direct question.
633
SUMMER, 1914
‘Can I do anything for you before I go?’
Jenny’s only answer was a slight movement of her head and
a smile that might mean anything. Completely at a loss, he
turned towards Jacques who was moving deliberately towards
the hall door.
‘And you, Jacques? Shan’t I see you again?’
The note of affection in his voice made Jenny raise her eyes
quickly and Jacques swing round. And his look betrayed such
emotion that Jacques forgot his grievance.
‘Are you leaving to-morrow?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘At what time?’
‘Very early. I’ll have to be out of the flat by seven.’
Jacques glanced at Jenny, then said rather gruffly:
‘Shall I come and call for you then?’
Antoine’s face lit up.
‘Yes, do ! Be here at seven. Will you come and see me off
at the station?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks, old chap.’ He gazed tenderly at his brother and
repeated: ‘Thanks.’
They were, all three, beside the hall door. Jacques opened
it for Jenny and crossed the threshold without meeting his
brother’s eyes. From the landing he said in a low voice :
‘Good-bye then, till to-morrow.’ And drew the door to,
behind him.
Suddenly he changed his mind. ‘Go down without me,’ he
said to Jenny. ‘I’ll meet you in the street.’ Hastily he thumped
the door with his fist.
Antoine was still in the hall. He went back to the door and
opened it. Jacques came in alone, closing the front door after
him.
‘There’s something I want to tell you.’ His eyes were fixed
on the floor.
Antoine guessed it was something imp)ortant.
‘Come,’ he said, leading the way to the small study.
Jacques followed in silence. When the door was closed, he
leaned against it, facing his brother.
634
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
‘You’ve got to know it, Antoine. Jenny and I came here
together to tell you.’
‘What’s that? Jenny and you?’
‘Yes,’ Jacques said firmly, with a curious smile.
Antoine was utterly bewildered. ‘But, I say, what ever do
you mean? Jenny and you !’
‘It goes back to years ago.’ The words came out hastily, in
rapid jerks, and Jacques felt his colour rising. ‘But it’s been
settled only now. During the last week.’
‘What’s been settled?’ Antoine backed to the sofa, sat down.
‘No, look here — -you don’t mean that seriously, do you? You
and Jenny . . . ?’
‘It’s true.’
‘But you hardly know each other. And then — as things are
now. . . . Getting engaged when we’re on the brink. . . .
Does it mean you’ve given up the idea of leaving France?’
‘No. I’m leaving to-morrow night. For Switzerland.’ After
a short pause he added : ‘With her.’
‘With her? But, Jacques, you must bemad ! Stark, staring mad !’
Jacques was still smiling.
‘Not a bit of it ! It’s quite simple : we love each other.’
‘Oh, don’t talk such nonsense!’ Antoine exclaimed, casting
discretion to the winds.
Jacques gave an angry laugh. He was cut to the quick by
his brother’s attitude.
‘I daresay it surprises you that people can have feelings of
that sort; no doubt you disapprove of them. So much the
worse . . . for you ! I only wanted to let you know. Well, I’ve
done it. So — au revoir’
‘Wait !’ Antoine cried. ‘It’s absurd. I can’t let you go away
with your head full of silly notions like that.’
^Au revoir.’
‘No. It’s my turn to speak and I’ve something to say to you.’
‘What’s the use? I’m beginning to think we’ll never be able
to understand each other.’
He had begun moving towards the door, but something held
him back. There was a short silence.
Antoine made an effort to regain his self-control.
635
StJMMfeR, 1914
‘Listen, Jacques. Let’s talk seriously.’ An ironical smile
curled Jacques’ lips. ‘There are two things to take into account.
One’s your temperament. The other is the moment that you’ve
chosen for — for acting in this way. Well, let’s take your tem-
perament to begin with, the sort of man you are. Let me tell
you the plain truth ; you’re fundamentally incapable of making
anyone happy. Even in other circumstances, you’d never have
been able to give Jenny a happy life.
Jacques shrugged derisively.’
‘No, let me have my say. Even in other circumstances. But
less than ever at the present moment, what with the war and
— and your ideas ! What are you going to do, what future lies
before you? No one can say — but it won’t bear thinking of.
Well, if you choose to run such risks, that’s your look-out. But
how can you link up another person’s life with yours at such
a moment? It’s a monstrous thing to do, and you should know
it ! Only, you’ve lost your head. You’ve given way to a childish
fancy that won’t stand a moment’s scrutiny.’
Jacques gave a cackle of pert, insolent laughter that stopped
short abruptly. There had been overtones of hatred, almost
of madness in its sound. Then he tossed back his forelock,
folded his arms and burst out ragefully :
‘So that’s how it is ! I come to you to tell you of our happi-
ness — and that is all you can find to say !’ Again his shoulders
lifted in a disdainful gesture. Then, holding the door-knob,
he turned and flung out over his shoulder: ‘I used to think
I knew you. It’s only in the last five minutes I’ve come to
know the sort of man you really are. Yes, I’ve found you out!
You’ve a heart of stone. You’ve never loved, and you never
will love anybody. A heart of stone — that nothing, nothing will
ever bring to life.’ He gazed down on his brother, scornfully
surveying him from the proud eyrie of his inviolable love. Then,
with a tight smile, he added, forcing out the words : ‘Do you
know what you really are — ^you with all your diplomas, all
your pride. You’re a poor creature, Antoine. No more than
that : a poor, pitiable creature.’
He gave a short, quickly suppressed laugh, and went out,
banging the door behind him.
636
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
Antoine remained for a while with bowed back, staring at
the carpet. Then ‘A heart of stone !’ he murmured half aloud.
His breath was coming in quick gasps, and the tumult of
his blood gave him a physical discomfort like the dizziness
brought on by a high altitude. He held his arm out in front
of him ; it was trembling uncontrollably. ‘My pulse must be
a hundred and twenty,’ he thought.
Slowly he straightened his shoulders and stood up; then,
going to the window, threw back the shutters.
No sound came from the courtyard, beyond which, pent
between two grey walls, the yellowing foliage of a chestnut-
tree made a patch of colour. But Antoine saw nothing of it ;
the foreground of his sight was all a picture of Jacques’ face,
truculent, twisted in a supercilious smile, and his eyes ablaze
with sullen rancour.
‘You’ve never loved,’ he muttered to himself, clenching his
fingers on the iron balustrade. ‘Well, if that’s what love means,
you damned young fool, you’re right: I’ve never loved. And
I’m proud of it !’
A girl appeared at one of the windows of the adjoining
building and looked up at him. Had he spoken out loud?
Leaving the window, he went back to the middle of the room.
‘Love! Countryfolk anyhow aren’t afraid of calling a spade
a spade; they say an animal’s “on heat.” But that would be
too simple for our young friends — and too humiliating. So it’s
got to be romanticized. You’re expected to roll your eyes to
heaven in a sort of swoon. “We love each other. I adore you.
Sweetheart mine!” The “heart,” of course, is the speciality of
your devout lover. As for me, I’ve a heart of stone. Be it so !
And, naturally, “I can’t understand.” The same old story; the
priggish craving all these people have to pose as being “mis-
understood.” It glorifies them in their own eyes. Like madmen ;
yes, exactly like mental cases. Every lunatic prides himself on
being misunderstood.’
He caught sight of himself in the mirror, waving his arms,
glaring at an unseen foe. He thrust his hands in his pockets and
fell to searching for some loftier pretext for his indignation.
‘It’s the silliness of it all that makes me see red. Yes, that’s
637
SUMMER, 1914
what’s got me on the raw — the outrage to my common sehse.
Now that I think of it, Fve noticed it before : a wound inflicted
on one’s common sense can sting one up like a whitlow.’
The thought of Philip waiting in the consulting-room helped
him to steady his nerves. Squaring his shoulders, he made a
move towards the door.
He grew aware that his fingers were nervously crushing some
paper in his pocket. Anne’s letter. He took it out, tore it in
two and dropped the pieces in the wastepaper-basket. His
eyes fell on his military service-book laid out on his desk. And
suddenly his mind stopped and stood still. To-morrow — war,
the risks of war; perhaps mutilation, death! ‘You’ve never
loved.’ To-morrow the chapter of his youth would be closed
untimely ; perhaps the hour of love would be past for ever.
Stooping over the wastepaper-basket, he fished up half the
letter, and unfolded it. Words pitiful as a broken cry, tender
and passionate as a caress.
To-night. At our place. I’ll be waiting ... to see you
again. Promise that you’ll come. Please, please come, my
Tony.
He sank heavily into an armchair, his mind in a turmoil.
For the last time, to feel her body nestling against his, her
fondling hands ; for the last time, the last, to fall asleep, glide
into oblivion, in her arms ! Then suddenly a wild regret,
a black wave of despair, swept over him. He rested his elbows
on the table and for some minutes sobbed like a child, his
hands pressed to his cheeks.
46
Saturday, August i
PARIS UNDER THE SHADOW OF MOBILIZATION
Paris was in calm, if tragic, mood. The clouds which had
been gathering since noon formed a grey dome overhead,
638
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
plunging the city in twilight gloom. Prematurely lighted, res-
taurants and shops cast livid trails of light across the sombre
streets, where crowds of excited people, deprived of the usual
means of conveyance, were hurrying in all directions. Under-
ground stations were being mobbed, queues of waiting pas-
sengers filHng the passages and overflowing on to the pavement ;
it took a full half-hour to get down to the platforms.
Abandoning their intention of travelling by underground,
Jacques and Jenny started on foot across Paris.
Newspaper-vendors, posted at every street corner, were doing
a roaring trade in special editions. Each buyer of a paper
stopped for a moment and ran eager eyes over it before going
on his way. For each was secretly hoping against hope to read
in it the news that European statesmen had suddenly come to
their senses and found a peaceful way out ; that the world had
got over its preposterous nightmare with nothing worse than
a bad scare.
At the Humanite offices, as in most Paris offices since mobiliza-
tion orders had come out, no one was to be found. Vestibule
and staircases were empty. The solitary office-boy on duty was
pacing up and down the hall; he told Jacques that Stefany
was not in his room. Current business was being despatched
by Gallot, but he had closed his door against all visitors, so
as to prepare the next day’s issue. Jacques and Jenny— who,
exhausted though she was, kept to him like his shadow — did
not venture to disturb him.
‘Let’s go to the Progress Jacques said.
In the ground-floor room of the restaurant nobody was about.
Even the proprietor was away; his wife, seated at the cash-
desk, looked as if she had been crying, and took no notice of
Jacques’ entry.
They went up to the mezzanine. The only people there were
some young militants, none of whom Jacques knew, grouped
round one of the tables. At the entrance of the new-comers
they fell silent for a minute or so; then all at once resumed
their talk.
Jacques was thirsty. He installed Jenny in a seat beside the
door and went down to get a bottle of beer.
SUMMER, 1914
‘And what else d’you propose to do, fathead? Wait for the
police to come, and get yourself shot like a god-damned fool?’
The speaker was a youth of twenty-five, pink-cheeked, with
a cap thrown well back on his head. His hard jet-black eyes
settled on each of his friends in turn as he spoke.
‘Anyhow’ — there was an undertone of excitement in the
coarse, harsh voice — ‘Anyhow don’t you forget this! For chaps
like us who’ve followed the whole show pretty closely, there’s
one thing clear, and it’s the only thing that matters. Our
country, anyhow, wasn’t out for war, and we have nothing
on our consciences.’
‘But that’s exactly what all the others are saying !’ the eldest
of the group put in. He was a man in the forties, wearing the
uniform of an underground railway employee.
‘The Germans can’t say as much anyway! They’ve had a
dozen chances in the last fortnight of preventing a war, and
not one of ’em did they take !’
‘What about us? We’d only got to tell them Russkys straight
from the shoulder: “You go to hell! We ain’t going to back
you.” ’
‘That wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s plain as a pike-
staff to-day, them Boches had their dirty little game all planned
out in advance. The bastards were spoiling for a war; well,
that’s their funeral. We’re all for peace, sure enough, but we
ain’t bloody cowards, not we ! France is being attacked ; well,
France has got to defend herself. And “France” means you
and me, and all the rest of us.’
All but the railway employee seemed to agree with him.
Jacques cast a despondent glance at Jenny. A memory came
to him of Studler’s remark ; ‘I’ve got to believe, I must convince
myself of the guilt of Germany.’
Without drinking his glass of beer, he rose, beckoning to
Jenny. But before going out, he went up to the group at the
other table.
‘A defensive war ! A war that’s forced upon us ! A just war !
Don’t you realize they’re throwing dust in our eyes — as they’ve
always done? Are you, too, going to let yourself be fooled?
It’s only three hours since the mobilization order came out,
640
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
and you’re climbing down already ! You’re giving way to those
brutal passions that the Press has been working up to fever-
pitch for the last week — passions that the Army leaders will
exploit to the utmost! Who’ll stand up against this wave of
madness if even socialists like you give in?’
He did not address any particular member of the group,
but his gaze fell on each in turn. His lips were quivering.
The youngest, a plasterer whose cheeks and hair were still
smeared with white, perked up a bird-like face towards Jacques.
‘I think the same like old Chataigner here,’ he announced
in a brisk, determined tone. T’m ordered to join up to-morrow,
the first day. I’ve no use for war, not I. But I’m a Frenchman
and France is being attacked. My country needs me, and I got
to go. I may hate it like hell, but I got to go.’
‘Same here,’ said the young man beside him. ‘I join up on
Tuesday, the third day. I come from Bar-le-Duc and my old
folk are living there yet. Well, I don’t want to see my home-
town annexed by them Germans.’
Jacques thought: Nine Frenchmen out of ten are like that
to-day. Eager to exculpate their country and convince them-
selves their enemies have foisted this war on them — so as to
justify the reactions of their combative instinct. And indeed
one can’t help wondering if young fellows like these don’t get
a sort of gloomy satisfaction out of suddenly feeling at one
with an outraged nation, breathing the heady atmosphere of
collective hatred. And it struck him that nothing had changed
since the days when Cardinal de Retz made bold to write :
‘Nothing is of greater consequence in handling a nation than
to make it appear to them, even when one attacks, that one
has only self-defence in mind.’ He addressed the young men
again in a low, mournful voice.
‘Anyhow, please think it over! If you throw in your hand
now, to-morrow it will be too late. Don’t forget that on the
other side of the frontier it’s exactly the same as it is here :
hatred, lies and blind, unreasoning hostility. Every nation has
become like those young hooligans who scrap like tiger-cats
just for scrapping’s sake, and blame it on to the other fellow.
“He started it!” Isn’t it too ridiculous?’
641 y
SUMMER, 1914
‘Then what the hell . . .?’ the plasterer growled. ‘Chaps
like us that’s mobilized, what do you want us to do?’
‘If you think that violence and justice are two different
things, if you think that human life is sacred, if you think there
aren’t two sorts of morality — one that condemns murder in
peace-time and another that insists on it in war-time — refuse
to let yourselves be mobilized. Keep out of the war ! Be loyal
to yourselves — and to the International!’
Jenny, who had been standing at the door, made a sudden
move, and came and stood beside him.
The plasterer had risen. Folding his arms, he retorted indig-
nantly :
‘To get myself stuck up against a wall and shot like a dog?
No, sir, nothing doing! Anyhow at the front a fellow has a
chance ; with a ha’p’orth of luck he saves his skin.’
‘But,’ Jacques cried, ‘can’t you sec how cowardly it is to
shirk one’s personal responsibility, to let other people, just
because they’re stronger, decide for one? You tell yourself:
“I disapprove, but I can’t do anything about it.” It goes
agfiinst the grain, but you salve your conscience easily enough
with the thought that it’s a struggle for yoti to submit, but
it’s the decent thing to do. But can’t you see you’ve been
bamboozled by a gang of criminals? Have you forgotten that
governments aren’t put in power just to tyrannize over their
subjects and send them to the slaughter — but to serve, to pro-
tect them; to give them happy lives?’
A swarthy-faced man in the thirties, who had said nothing
so far, banged the table with his fist.
‘No, I tell you! You’re wrong there. None of that’s true
to-day. Heaven knows I’ve never truckled to the authorities.
I’m as good a socialist as you. I’ve five years’ Party membership
behind me. Well, sociahst as I am. I’m ready to shoulder my
rifle and stand by the Government.’ Jacques made as if to put
in a word, but the man raised his voice ; ‘Just now “convictions”
are neither here nor there. Nationalists, capitalists, all the
top-dogs — ^we’ll see about ’em later. And when it comes to
settling their hash. I’ll take a hand in it, don’t you worry!
But just now ain’t the moment for ideals and all that. We got
642
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
to settle up with them Fritzes, first of all. Those swine are out
for a war. Well, let ’em have one! And, take my word, I’ll
do my bit to make ’em rue the day they started it!’
Jacques turned away with a vague gesture of resignation;
there was nothing to be done here. Taking Jenny’s arm, he
drew her towards the staircase.
‘Still — Socialism for ever!’ a voice cried behind them. . . .
In the street they walked in silence for some minutes. Distant
rumblings heralded a storm ; the sky was black as ink.
‘It’s a curious thing,’ Jacques said, ‘I’ve always believed —
I’ve said it dozens of times — that wars have nothing to do with
emotion, that they’re inevitably due to a clash of conflicting
economic interests. Well, when I see to-day how every class
of society, without distinction, has worked itself up so easily
into a patriotic frenzy. I’m almost beginning to wonder if wars
aren’t, rather, the result of some instinctive, uncontrollable
uprush of emotions, and if the conflict of interests isn’t merely
a pretext for letting the instincts have their run.’ He broke
off, letting his thoughts run on before he spoke again. ‘And the
most grotesque thing of all is the need they feel, not only to
justify themselves, but to proclaim that if they’ve given in
they’ve done so for good reasons, and of their own accord !
Their own accord ! All these poor wretches who yesterday were
fighting doggedly to stave off a war and now are dragged into
it against their will are resolutely putting up a show of acting
on their own initiative.’ Again he paused before continuing.
‘It’s positively tragic that all these shrewd, sharp-witted men
should suddenly become so gullible, once their patriotic
emotions are being played on. Tragic, and almost incompre-
hensible. Perhaps it’s simply this : the average man identifies
himself unthinkingly with his country, his nation and his
Government. He gets into the way of saying, “We Frenchmen
. . .” or “We Germans. . . .” And, as each individual
genuinely desires peace, it’s impossible for him to admit that
his country is out for war. Almost one might say that the more
a man is keen on peace, the more inclined he is to exonerate
his country and his countrymen, and the easier it is to con-
vince him that all the provocations come from the foreigner;
643
SUMMER, 1914
that his government isn’t to blame and he belongs to a com-
munity which is being victimized, and that if he fights for it
he’s acting in self-defence.’
He stopped abruptly; big drops of rain were beginning to
fall, and they were crossing the open square facing the
Bourse.
‘Run for it!’ he cried. ‘You’ll get soaked through!’
They reached the arcades of the Rue des Colonnes only just
in time. The storm that had been threatening all day had
broken with dramatic suddenness and violence. The flashes
were continuous, nerve-shattering; crashes of thunder rolled
their long reverberations between the lofty buildings with the
incessant din of a storm in the high mountains. Along the Rue
du Quatre Septembre a detachment of mounted police trotted
past, the riders crouching under the downpour over their
steaming horses’ necks, while spray flashed up under the horse-
hoofs and, as in a lurid battle-piece, helmets glistened under
a sullen sky.
‘Let’s go there,’ Jacques suggested, pointing to a dark,
already crowded, little restaurant under the arcades. ‘We can
have something to eat while we wait.’
After some trouble they found two adjoining empty places
in the ring of occupied seats around a marble-topped table.
No sooner was Jenny seated than she felt herself collapsing
with fatigue ; her knees were trembling, her back and shoulders
aching, and her head weighed like a lump of lead. For a
moment she fancied she was going to be sick. If only she could
lie down, close her eyes, snatch a few minutes’ sleep — delicious
sleep, nestling in his arms ! Suddenly a memory of the previous
night swept over her, and with it came a swift access of energy.
Jacques had noticed nothing. She saw his face in profile, the
lock of dark hair, shot with glints of red, falling across his
forehead. Almost she gripped his arm, saying : ‘Let’s go home.
What 'does all the rest matter? Take me in your arms, hold
me, clasp me to your breast !’
All the people round them were engaged in animated con-
versation, their eyes sparkling with excitement, exchanging
fraternal glances as they passed each other salt-cellar or mus-
644
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
tard-pot. The wildest, most contradictory rumours were being
bandied about with serene assurance, and swallowed without
a qualm. ‘What a dreadful storm ! Let’s only hope it doesn’t
hold up our attack!’ sighed a middle-aged dame, her lobster-
red face glowing with combative, if vicarious, patriotism. ‘In
1870,’ put in a fat man opposite Jenny, wearing the Legion
d’Honneur rosette on his lapel, ‘the actual fighting didn’t start
till long after war was declared, at least a fortnight after.’ ‘I
hear,’ someone remarked, ‘there’ll be a shortage of sugar.’
‘And of salt,’ added the heroic lady. Turning to Jenny, she
whispered in a confidential tone: ‘I saw it coming, and I’ve
taken my precautions, if you see what I mean, my dear.’
The fat man with the rosette, addressing the company at
large, launched out into a story he had heard about a colonel
in a frontier regiment. His voice was vibrant with an emotion
that seemed to act contagiously on his hearers. The gallant
colonel, it seemed, on receiving the order to march his men
back ten kilometres from the frontier, had taken it to mean
that France was flinching before the enemy; preferring death
to dishonour, he had blown his brains out in the presence of
his regiment.
At the end of the table a workman was eating his meal in
silence. Warily his eyes roved the table, before settling on
Jacques. Then he began speaking in an angry tone.
‘That’s all very fine and large, for the rest of you. But where
do we come in, eh? When we went to draw our wages at the
“shop” this evening, they wouldn’t pay us — not a soul’
‘That’s tough luck I’ observed the rosetted gentleman.
‘Why?’
‘Seems, from what the boss says, that all the money’s in a
bank, and the bank’s shut. We raised cain about it, you bet 1
But there wasn’t nothing to be done. “Come back Monday,”
says he.’
‘Of course,’ the red-faced lady reassured him. ‘You’ll all
get paid on Monday.’
‘Monday’s neither here nor there. A lot of my mates is
joining up to-morrow. And that means they got to leave their
wives and kids without a penny.’
645
SUMMER, 1914
‘There’s no need to worry,’ said the wearer of the rosette
in the tone of one who knows his subject. ‘The Government
has made provision for that, as for all other war emergencies.
Distributions are going to be made at all the town-halls. Our
men can feel quite easy about the families they leave behind ;
the State will look after them. They won’t go short of any-
thing.’
‘Eh? Is that so?’ the workman muttered, obviously impressed.
‘Then why didn’t they tell us about it?’
A man beside Jacques who had managed to procure a copy
of the late special edition of an evening paper, mentioned
Poincare’s message ‘7b the French People'
‘Let’s see it!’ Eager hands were stretched towards him, but
the man would not part with his treasure-trove.
‘Read it out then!’ commanded the gentleman with the
rosette.
The owner of the paper, a little weasel-faeed man, settled
his glasses on his nose.
‘It’s signed by every member of the Cabinet,’ he announced
dramatically. Then began reading in a high-pi tehed voiee.
‘ “Alive to our responsibilities, and aware that, did we take
no steps to meet the present emergency, we should be failing
in our most sacred duties, we have issued the orders whieh
it has rendered imperative.” ’ He paused to take breath.
‘ “Mobilization does not necessarily mean war.” ’
‘Do you hear, Jacques?’ Jenny breathed, with a flutter of
sudden hope.
Jacques shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
‘It’s a trick for getting the miee into the mouse-trap. But,
once he’s got them in, he’ll see they stay there.’
‘ “On the eontrary,” ’ the shrill voice continued, ‘ “under
the present eircumstances, mobilization seems the best means
of ensuring peace with honour.” ’
All, ineluding those at neighbouring tables, were listening
now in silence.
‘Louder!’ someone called from the end of the room. The
man who was reading rose to his feet. And now, as he read
on, his voice broke sometimes with emotion; there was some-
646
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1
thing comic and pathetic in the little man’s evident illusion
that it was he himself who at this moment was addressing
France. Solemnly he repeated:
‘ “Peace with honour. The Government counts on our valiant
nation to keep its self-command and not give way to unjustified
emotion.” ’
‘Bravo !’ cried the red-cheeked woman.
‘ “Unjustified” ! ’ Jacques muttered.
‘ “We rely on the loyalty of every Frenchman, knowing full
well not one of us will fail the call of duty. The hour of party
politics is over. For us to-day nothing counts but France,
immortal France, peace-loving, indomitable France; the land
of Right and Justice, a nation standing shoulder to shoulder
in dauntless calm, in vigilance and dignity.” ’
When he ceased reading there ensued a long, tense silence.
Then, fired by the exalting theme, everyone began speaking
at once. The middle-aged lady’s heroism was not an excep-
tional phenomenon. The man facing Jenny had gone scarlet
as his rosette, and the eyes of the workman who had not been
paid had filled with tears. Each had yielded with a sort of
rapture to the collective enthusiasm, agreeably raised above
his workaday self, dazed with sublimity, braced up to welcome
a martyr’s death.
Jacques kept silence. He was picturing the very similar
declarations that at the same hour had presumably been signed
in other lands, by leaders of the other nations, by the Kaiser
and the Czar. In every country, he mused, those spell-binding
phrases are charged with the same power; everywhere they
evoke the same ridiculous frenzies of devotion.
He noticed that Jenny had pushed away her plate of soup
almost untasted. Making a sign to her, he rose.
The rain had ceased, though drops were still falling from
the balconies. Torrents of muddy water were swirling along
the gutters and plunging with loud gurglings down the drains.
People had come out of shelter and the glistening pavements
were thronged, as before the storm, with aimlessly hurrying
crowds.
‘Now let’s go to the Chamber of Deputies,’ Jacques said,
647
SUMMER, 1914
feverishly dragging Jenny along beside him. ‘I wonder what
they’re up to there, with Muller.’
Even now, preposterous as it might seem, he could not have
affirmed that he had lost all hope.
47
Saturday^ August i
THE REACTIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS TO THE ORDER FOR
MOBILIZATION
Unobtrusive watch was kept over the Palais-Bourbon
by the Municipal Guards. Alongside the railings enclosing the
outer court, however, groups of men were standing about and
towards these Jacques made his way, accompanied by Jenny.
In one of the groups, under the light streaming down from
the arc-lamps, he had glimpsed Rabbe’s tall figure.
‘The conversations are still under way,’ the old militant
explained. ‘They’ve just come out, on their way to dinner.
The discussion will be resumed presently. But not here ; at the
offices of the Humanite.'
‘Well? What are the first impressions?’
‘None too good. But it’s mighty hard to get to know a thing.
They were all red in the face, half perished for want of a drink,
and kept severely mum. The only one at all approachable was
Siblot. And he made no attempt to hide his disappointment.
Isn’t that so?’ he added, turning to Jumelin, who was
coming up.
Jenny scrutinized the two men in silence. Jumelin’s looks
displeased her. The long lean face, sallow and perspiring, the
beardless, abnormally prominent jaw, the way he had of
648
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
Speaking in short, abrupt phrases, without opening his mouth
sufficiently, the square shoulders, the hard glitter of the small
jet-black eyes, made the girl uncomfortable. Old Rabbe, on
the contrary, with his gnarled forehead, and the limpid,
melancholy gaze, which always rested on Jacques with fatherly
affection, greatly appealed to her ; she felt he could be trusted.
‘That fellow Muller doesn’t seem to have any definite in-
structions,’ Jumelin observed. ‘He brings us no firm offer of
any kind.’
‘If that’s so, what was the point of his coming?’
‘Just to collect information.’
‘Information !’ Jacques exclaimed. ‘When, as likely as not,
the time has passed even for action !’
Jumelin shrugged his shoulders.
‘You and your precious action! D’you suppose it’s still
possible to decide on anything, with the situation changing
from one hour to the next? Don’t you know that Germany,
too, has ordered a general mobilization? The order came out
at five, shortly after ours. And this very evening, they say,
Germany will declare war on Russia, officially.’
‘Look here,’ Jacques put in testily, ‘has or has not Muller
come here to arrange for close co-operation between the Ger-
man proletariat and the French, to fix up, belated though it
has to be, a general strike in both countries?’
‘A strike? Certainly not,’ Jumelin replied. ‘He has merely
come, I believe, to find out whether the Party, in France, will
or will not vote for the military budget the Government intend
to lay before Parliament next Monday. That’s all.’
‘Well it would be that much gained,’ Rabbe put in, ‘if the
socialist members of both parliaments, French and German,
agreed to a common policy on that point.’
‘I wonder, now,’ Jumelin observed enigmatically.
Jacques was hardly able to restrain his impatience.
‘What one is entitled to say,’ Jumelin went on in an impres-
sive tone, ‘and what our Party leaders, so I gather, have not
failed to impress upon Muller in every possible way, is that
France has done her utmost to avert war. Down to the very last
minute. Even going so far as to move back her covering forces.
649 Y*
SUMMER, 1914
We French socialists, anyhow, have a clean conscience in that
respect. And we’ve a perfect right to look upon Germany as
the aggressor State.’
Jacques stared at him in amazement.
‘Inotherwords,’heexclaimedindignantly, ‘the French socialist
deputies are prepared to vote in favour of the estimates.’
‘Anyhow, they can’t vote against them.’
‘ “They can’t?” What do you mean?’
‘What they’re most likely to do is abstain from voting one
way or the other,’ Rabbe suggested.
‘Oh,’ Jacques cried, ‘if only Jaures were still with us !’
‘Jaures? In my opinion, under the present circumstances,
even the Skipper wouldn’t have dared to vote against the
Government.’
‘But, don’t you know’ — Jacques’ voice was shrill with anger
— ‘that Jaures showed up time and again the absurdity of
attempting to discriminate between the “aggressor nation” and
the “victim of aggression”? It’s a mere pretext for endless
quibbling. You all seem to have lost sight of the real causes
of the appalling situation we are in to-day — capitalism and the
imperialistic aims of Governments. Whatever impressions we
may have about who fires the first shot, it’s against war —
aggressive and defensive equally — that International Socialism
must protest. Otherwise. . . .’
Rabbe approved, but with reservations.
‘In principle, I agree. And Muller certainly seems to have
said something on those lines.’
‘Well, then?’
Rabbe made no reply, but flung out his arms despondently.
‘So that’s as far as they’ve got? And off they marched to
dinner, arm in arm?’
‘No,’ Jumelin amended. ‘You’ve forgotten to mention that
Muller said he wanted to ring up Berlin, and confer with his
Party leaders.’
‘Good!’ Jacques was only too thankful to clutch at the
least straw.
He turned on his, heel, took a few rageful steps, came back
and faced the two men again.
650
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
‘Do you know what my opinion is? I suspect that fellow
Muller came here simply to see how far the French Party would
go in the way of internationalism and pacifism. And if he’d
had to deal with genuine die-hards, ready to go to any length,
to call a general strike so as to thwart the imperialistic schemes
of the Government — well in that case, let me tell you, peace
might still have been preserved. Yes, even now, at the eleventh
hour, even after orders have gone out for mobilization. Peace
might still have been saved if the French and the German
workers had united, and thrown their weight into the scales.
Instead of this, what did he find? A gang of word-spinners,
of parlour socialists, ready enough to denounce war and
nationalism in their speeches, but quite prepared to vote in
favour of the Army Estimates to-morrow and to give the
General Staff a free hand. Down to the very last minute we’ll
have persisted in the same absurd and criminal anomaly — the
same damned shilly-shallying between the internationalist
ideal, to which we all adhere in theory, and our so-called
national interests, which no one, even among the socialist
leaders, is prepared to sacrifice in practice.’
While he was speaking, Jenny, exhausted as she was, never
took her eyes off him. Jacques’ voice worked on her like music,
soothing her nerves with its familiar cadences. She seemed all
attention, though she was far too weary to listen to the words.
She watched Jacques’ face, and, above all, his curiously ex-
pressive lips, restless as though endowed with independent life
— and the sight of them gave her a physical sensation, as if
his mouth were pressed on hers. Memories of the night spent
in his arms made her heart grow faint with yearning. ‘Oh,
why don’t we go home?’ she kept on saying to herself. ‘What
is he waiting for? Why can’t he come away? Let’s go home.
What does anything else matter?’
Gadieux, bustling from one group to the other, broadcasting
‘the latest,’ accosted them :
‘The Minister of the Interior has just been approached with a
request for Muller to be allowed to ring up Berlin, but — nothing
doing ! All communication has been cut off. It’s too late for any-
thing to be done. There’s martial law on both sides of the frontier.
651
SUMMER, 1914
‘There went perhaps our last chance,’ Jacques whispered,
turning to Jenny.
Cadieux overheard the remark.
‘The last chance for what?’ he mocked.
‘f'or action by the proletariat. For international action.’
Cadieux had a twisted smile.
‘International, did you say? My dear fellow, let’s see things
as they are ; from now on, there’s only one thing that is inter-
national, and it’s not the pacifist movement— it’s war.’
Was this only a forlorn attempt at wit? Shrugging his
shoulders, he slipped away into the darkness.
‘It’s true,’ Jumelin muttered. ‘Only too true. War has broken
out. Whether we face the fact with a good grace or a bad one,
we socialists — like all other Frenchmen — are from now on at
war. Some day, I suppose, we’ll get a chance of starting our
international activities again; but that day’s far ahead. For
the time being pacifism is ... a dead letter !’
‘Can it be you, Jumelin, who talk like that?’ Jacques
exclaimed.
‘Aye, it’s me ! We’re up against a new state of affairs ; there’s
a war on. To my mind, that alters everything,' and our duty,
as socialists, is perfectly plain; we mustn’t make things harder
for the Government.’
Jacques stared at him in amazement.
‘And so you’d let yourself be mobilized?’
‘Why, certainly. Next Tuesday let me inform you. Comrade
Jumelin will be a humble private in the 239th Territorial
Regiment at Rouen.’
Jacques stared at his feet, but made no comment.
Rabbe came up and patted him on the shoulder.
‘Don’t make yourself out more mulish than you are. If you
don’t think as he does to-day. I’ll bet you will do so to-morrow.
Why, it’s as plain as a pikestaff : the cause of France is the cause
of democracy. It’s up to us as socialists to stand up for demo-
cracy against these ruffianly imperialist powers that are
attacking us.’
‘So you, too . . .?’
‘Surely, my lad. If I was a few years younger. I’d volunteer
652
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
for active service. I’ll have a shot at it, even as it is. They may
possibly find some use for these old bones of mine. Why do you
stare at me like that? I haven’t changed my mind. I sincerely
hope to live long enough to be able, some day, to take up the
fight against militarism once more. I still loathe militarism like
poison. But it’s no good blinking the facts. Militarism isn’t
what it used to be. One mayn’t like it, but militarism to-day
is the salvation of France; more than that, it’s the salvation of
democracy in the hour of peril. So I’m burying the hatchet —
for the time being. And I’m quite prepared to act as the rest
of the boys are acting ; get hold of a gun and do my bit for the
old country. Later on — we shall see what we shall see.’
He met Jacques’ disapproving gaze boldly. The ghost of a
smile, in which confusion and pride struggled for mastery,
hovered about his lips, making the forlorn expression of his eyes
more poignant still.
‘Even Rabbe!’ Jacques murmured to himself, averting his
eyes. The air had suddenly become unbreathable.
Catching Jenny’s arm, he walked away with her abruptly,
without a word of farewell.
Outside the gateway an excited crowd had gathered.
In the middle of the crowd Pages — Gallot’s private secretary
— was holding forth, gesticulating wildly. Among the younger
militants surrounding him, Jacques recognized several familiar
faces : Bouvier, Herard, and Fougerolle ; Latour, a leading
trade unionist ; Odelle and Chardent, sub-editors on the
Humanite staff.
Pages caught sight of Jacques and beckoned to him.
‘Have you heard the news? A cable from St. Petersburg has
just come in. Germany declared war on Russia this evening.’
Bouvier, a sickly-looking man in the forties, with a sallow
complexion, who often figured as a speaker at public meetings,
turned towards Jacques.
‘It’s an ill wind blows no one any good. Out there, at the
Front, there’ll be work for everyone. Let ’em issue us with rifles
and ammunition, and let’s get on with the job.’
Jacques did not answer him. He distrusted Bouvier, the man’s
shifty eyes displeased him. Mourlan had observed to him one
653
SUMMER, 1914
evening as they left a political meeting at which Bouvier had
delivered himself of a particularly violent harangue : ‘I’ve got
no use for that fellow. He’s a bit too zealous for my taste.
Every time arrests are made, he’s one of the first to be snapped
up, but by some mysterious chance he always gets discharged.’
‘The biggest joke,’ Bouvier went on with a smothered laugh,
‘is that they think they’re sending us to fight a nationalist war.
They haven’t the faintest notion that within a month from
now, it’s a civil war we shall be fighting.’
‘And within a couple of months, a Revolution,’ cried Latour.
Jacques enquired icily:
‘So you, too, are going to let yourselves be mobilized?’
‘Why of course ! It’s too good a chance to let slip.’
‘What about you. Pages?’
‘What do you suppose !’
His features had not their usual expression, and there was an
unwonted shrillness in his voice. He spoke, in fact, as if he had
been drinking.
‘Now, this war that’s starting, we’re not to blame if it’s not
been possible to stop it. It had to come, and it’s no use crying
over spilt milk. At least let it bring about the end of this rotten
social order which doesn’t even realize that it’s compassing its
own destruction. It rests with us to make sure that capitalism
doesn’t survive the disaster it has brought upon itself Let this
war at least serve the cause of social evolution, let it be to the
advantage of mankind, let it be the last, the freedom-giving
war!’
‘War on war 1’ a raucous voice yelled from the shadows.
‘We’re going to fight,’ Odelle exclaimed, ‘but as soldiers
of the Revolution, for the final disarmament and emancipation
of every people of the earth.’
Herard, a Post Office employee, who always commanded
attention on account of his extraordinary likeness to Briand
— whose deep voice also he brought to mind, with its rich,
passionate overtones — added slowly :
‘Yes, thousands and thousands of innoeent people are going
to be slaughtered. It’s foul! And the only thing that can
possibly reconcile one with such an abomination is the thought
654
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
that we shall thus be paying the ransom of the future. Those
who survive this baptism of blood will have newly tempered
souls. They will see nothing before them but ruins. But on those
ruins they will at last be able to build up the new social order.’
Jenny, standing behind Jacques, saw his shoulders lift a
little. She thought he was about to take part in the discussion.
But he turned towards her without saying a word. She was
struck by the change in his expression. Again he linked his arm
in hers and moved away from the group, pressing her to his
side. He was glad to have her with him ; the feeling of loneliness
that had come over him lost something of its bitterness ‘No,’
he thought, ‘No! Far better die than tolerate what my very
soul abhors I Far better die than be guilty of such a betrayal I’
‘Did you hear them?’ he said, after a while. ‘It’s simply
incredible, the way they’ve changed !’
Just then Fougerolle, who had not uttered a word during the
talk outside the gates, came up to them.
‘You’re quite right,’ he blurted out, abruptly forcing them
to come to a standstill. ‘I had half a mind to desert, let me tell
you, rather than play false to my ideas. Yes, that’s how I felt.
But if I were to do so^ I’d never feel certain of having done it
from conscientious motives and not out of sheer funk. For,
there’s no denying it, I’m scared stiff! And so, ridiculous as it
is. I’ll act as they will; I’ll join up.’
Without giving Jacques time to answer, he marched reso-
lutely off.
‘I dare say lots of others feel as he does,’ Jacques murmured
pensively.
Skirting the Palais-Bourbon, along the Rue de Bourgogne,
they walked down to the Seine.
‘Do you know what struck me most?’ Jacques said after
another silence. ‘It was the look in their eyes, the tone of their
voices, a sort of involuntary exhilaration one couldn’t help
noticing in their behaviour. Indeed one can’t help wondering,
supposing they were to hear to-night that orders had been
issued for demobilization, whether their first reaction wouldn’t
be one of disappointment. And the most tragic thing of all,’ he
went on in the same breath, ‘is the tremendous amount of
SUMMER, 1914
energy expended by them in the service of war. The courage,
the contempt of death. The wastage of so much steadfastness of
spirit, a hundredth part of which would have been enough to
stop war breaking out, if only it had been employed, while
there yet was time, in the service of peace !’
On their way across the Pont de la Concorde, they met
Stefany, walking alone, with bowed head, horn-rimmed
spectacles straddling the big bony nose. He, too, was hurrying
to the spot, eager to learn the outcome of the negotiations.
Jacques informed him that the conversations had been
adjourned and were to be resumed a little later on, in the
Humanite building.
Tn that case I’ll go back to the office,’ Stefany declared,
turning back.
Jacques was still lost in sombre thought. He took a few steps
without speaking; then, remembering Mourlan’s prophesy, he
plucked Stefany’s sleeve.
‘It’s all over,’ he said. ‘There are no true socialists left.
There are only socialists-in-uniform.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘They’re all prepared to take part in the wan They imagine
they’re obeying their conscience by sacrificing their revolu-
tionary ideals to the “my-country-is-in-danger” Mumbo
Jumbo. The bitterest opponents of war have been the most
eager to join up : Jumelin, Pages, every one of them ! Why, old
Rabbe himself is prepared to volunteer, if they’ll have him!’
‘What? Rabbe?’ Stefany sounded incredulous, but picked
himself up at once. ‘No, I’m not really surprised. Cadieux is
off as well, and Berthet, and Jourdain. They’ve all had their
marching orders in their pockets since yesterday. Even Gallot,
short-sighted as he is, has begged Guesde to put in a word for
him at the Ministry, to get him seconded from the Commissariat
and sent on active service.’
‘The Party’s leaderless, in fact,’ Jacques gloomily summed up.
‘The Party? I wouldn’t go so far as that. But what certainly
is leaderless is the opposition to the forces that make for war.’
Jacques drew closer to his friend in a rush of brotherly
affection,
656
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
‘You, too, are of opinion, aren’t ypu, that if Jaures were still
with us . . .?’
‘Of course, he’d be on our side ! Or rather the Party, to a
man, would have stood by him, Dunois, it was, who put the
matter in a nutshell. “The socialist conscience wouldn’t be
divided against itself” ’
In silence they crossed the Place de la Concorde, which,
now there was no wheeled traffic, seemed more spacious, more
brilliantly lighted than usual. Stefany’s sallow face kept
twitching spasmodically.
All of a sudden, he stopped dead. The light from a street-
lamp, lengthening his features, made them stand out in clean-
cut relief and struck brief, intermittent flashes from the glasses
masking the darkness of his deep-set eyes.
‘Jaures!’ he exclaimed. As he uttered the name his melodious
Southern voice took on so tender, so heartbroken an intonation
that Jacques felt a lump rise to his throat. ‘Do you know what
he said in my presence, last Thursday, just as he was leaving
Brussels ? Huysmans was starting back to Amsterdam and saying
good-bye to him. The Skipper looked him squarely in the eyes,
and said : “Look here, Huysmans. Even if war should break
out, mind you keep the International afloat. If friends beg you
to take sides in the struggle, do nothing of the sort. Keep the
International afloat. Even if I myself were to come and beg
you to declare yourself for one side or the other, don’t Listen,
Huysmans ! At all costs, whatever happens, stand by the
International.” ’Jacques was stirred to the depths of his being.
‘Yes, even if there are but ten of us left. Even if there are but
two. Our duty is to keep the International alive, whatever
happens.’ His voice was vibrant with emotion. Jenny, deeply
moved herself, drew close to his side, but he did not seem to
notice her. Once again he repeated slowly, as though making
a vow to himself: ‘To keep the International alive!’
‘But how is one to go about it?’ he mused. And it seemed to
him that he was setting forth alone into the heart of darkness. . . .
It was past midnight when Jacques and Jenny left the
Humanite offices, where a crowd of militants had gathered to
hear the latest news. Though he had lost all hope, Jacques
657
SUMMER, 1914
had been unwilling to leave the place without knowing the
upshot of the conversations with the German delegate. Time
and again, distressed by Jenny’s look of utter weariness, he had
begged her to go home to bed, saying he would join her later
on; but on every occasion she had refused to go. Finally, in
Stefany’s private office, where they had taken refuge in com-
pany with a score of other socialists, Gallot informed them that
the conference was drawing to an end. Indeed Muller and
De Man had cut things fine ; it was as much as they could do
to make the Gai'e du Nord in time for the last train to Belgium
available for civilians. Jacques and Jenny saw them rushing
down the passage. Cachin, who was wearing the sash that pro-
claimed his rank as deputy, was detailed to see them to the train
and safely off. Even so, there were doubts as to whether Muller
would be allowed to cross the Belgian frontier.
Under a volley of questions, Gallot irritably shook his
tousled head. In the end, however, a few scraps of information
were wrung from him. By and large, he admitted, this final
contact betwen the French and German Socialists had yielded
no result whatever. After six hours of heart-to-heart discussion,
it had been found necessary to be content with the expression
of a pious hope that both in the Chamber of Deputies and the
Reichstag, the Socialists, without actually voting against the
War Estimates, would at least abstain from voting at all. The
meeting had adjourned, after reaching the pathetically lame
conclusion that ‘considering the unstable nature of the situa-
tion, there was no immediate possibility of entering into more
definite commitments.’
In fact it had been a complete fiasco. The doctrine of inter-
national solidarity had been proved a mere delusion and a snare.
Jacques turned and gazed at Jenny, as though seeking from
her some consolation for his frustrated hopes. She was seated
at some distance from him on a stool, leaning against a book-
case, with her hands listlessly resting on her knees. The light
from a lamp above fell slantwise on her profile, forming deep
pools ofshadow under her eyelids and her cheekbones. The effort
it cost her to keep her eyes open had dilated the pupils. He
had a sudden longing to fold her in his arms, rock her to sleep,
658
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1
bring respite to her weariness. And the pity Jacques was feeling
for mankind that night suddenly crystallized into a vast com-
passion for this frail, tired girl who from now on was to mean
all the world for him.
He went up to her, helped her to rise, and silently led her
from the room.
She hurried down the staircase in front of him, her weariness
a thing of the past. But once outside, in the street, when she
felt Jacques’ feverish arm steal round her waist, she suddenly
was conscious, in the midst of her joy, of a curious, indefinable
thrill of something still more potent than the deep emotion
linking her to him, body and soul — a thrill absolutely new to
her and terrifying in its violence, and bringing such a rush of
blood to her head that she felt dizzy, all but lost her balance,
and raised her hand to her brows.
‘Why, Jenny, you’re fagged out!’ he exclaimed in dismay.
‘What’s to be done? I’m afraid there’s no prospect of getting
a cab to-night.’
Clinging to each other, their tired nerves strained to breaking-
point, they made their way across the darkness.
There were still quite a number of people in the streets.
Small bodies of policemen and Municipal Guards were posted
at every crossing.
In the Place Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, they were surprised
to find the doors of the church wide open. The nave glowed
in the darkness like some magic grotto, its coigns of shadow lit
with clustered candles that made the apse a haze of broken
lights. Late though was the hour, the aisles were full of silent
figures bent in prayer ; on their knees round the confessionals,
a number of young men were awaiting their turn. Jacques was
greatly interested and could not help being moved at the
thought of the distress of mind that lay behind this uprush of
religious feeling. He even made as if to enter the church, but
Jenny indignantly pulled him away. Instinctively, no doubt,
with three centuries of Protestantism in her blood, she balked
at the pomp and ‘idolatry’ of Roman Catholic ceremonial.
They started walking again, without exchanging their
impressions.
659
SUMMER, 1914
Jenny was growing more and more exhausted, and leaned
heavily on Jacques’ arm. At one moment, for no apparent
reason, she took his hand and pressed her cheek to it. He
stopped short, his senses tingling. Casting a quick glance round,
he drew her into a doorway and caught her in his arms. ‘At
last!’ she thought. Her lips grew soft and now she made no
effort to elude his kiss, the kiss she had been awaiting so many
weary hours. Shutting her eyes, with a thrill of pleasure she
gave her lips to his.
After crossing the Central Market they walked up the
Boulevard Saint-Michel. The time, by the Law Courts clock,
was a quarter past one. There were no longer so many pedes-
trians about, but, in the main streets leading to the city gates,
the causeway was occupied by an endless stream of comman-
deered vehicles, horses led by the bridle, motor-cars driven by
soldiers in uniform, regiments marching in silence towards
secret destinations. There was no rest, that night, anywhere in
Europe.
They made slow progress. Jenny was limping, and she
confessed to Jacques that one of her shoes was hurting her. He
insisted on her leaning more heavily on his arm, and held her
up ; all but carried her bodily. It made her feel at once mortified
and deeply touched. As they drew nearer home, an under-
current of anxiety mingled with their impatience. Both were
conscious of having reached the extreme limit of mental and
physical endurance ; yet all the same, across the dusk of weari-
ness and foreboding, glowed a steady flame of joy.
Jenny’s first glance, after switching on the light in the hall,
was to make sure, as she never failed to do when she came in,
that the concierge had not slipped a telegram from Vienna
under the door. Nothing. Her heart sank. There was no longer
any chance of hearing from her mother before they left.
‘Let’s hope communications between Austria and Switzerland
haven’t been cut,’ she murmured. That was now her sole
remaining hope.
Jacques tried to comfort her.
‘The moment we get to Geneva, we’ll go round to the
French Consulate.’
660
SATURDAY, AUGUST I
They lingered in the hall, each obsessed by memories of the
previous night; and suddenly they were abashed at finding
themselves alone again under the garish light that ruthlessly
revealed their faces drawn with fatigue and their eyes haunted
by the same recollection.
‘Come,’ Jacques said, but dared not make a move.
Unthinkingly he stooped to pick up a newspaper, folded it
slowly and replaced it on the hall table.
‘I’m simply dying for a drink of water,’ he remarked, with
somewhat forced unconcern. ‘How about you?’
‘So’m I.’
In the kitchen the remains of their midday meal still littered
the table.
‘Our first lunch together,’ Jacques smiled. ‘And didn’t I
enjoy it !’
He turned on the tap, waited till the water ran cold, then
handed the glass to Jenny, who had sunk to the nearest chair.
She took a few sips, and gave the glass back to him, turning
away her eyes. She was sure he would put his lips to the place
where she had laid her own. He gulped down two glassfuls in
quick succession, gave a little grunt of satisfaction and came
over to her. Taking her face between his hands, he bent
towards her. But he merely gave her a long look, his face almost
touching hers. Then he said, very gently :
‘You poor darling, it’s terribly late, and you’re quite fagged
out. And to-morrow night, there’s that dreadful train-journey
before us. Now you just go and have a good long sleep in your
own bed.’
She did not answer, but her shoulders suddenly drooped. He
forced her to rise; swaying on her feet, she let him draw her
to the door of her room.
It was in darkness, but for the faint glimmer of the summer
night sky entering through the window.
‘Now you must go to sleep, go to sleep,’ he murmured in her
ear, like an incantation.
She stiffened up and remained standing in the doorway,
pressed close against him.
‘Over there !’ Her voice came in a whisper.
66 1
SUMMER, 1914
‘Over there’ meant the couch in Daniel’s room. He took a
deep breath, but gave no answer. When Jenny had consented
to go with him to Switzerland, his first thought had been : It’s
in Geneva she’ll be mine. But after the tempestuous emotions
of that eventful day, the balance of the universe seemed to have
been shattered. The unforeseen had become normal; the
exceptional, the rule ; no pledge held good.
For a few moments yet, fully conscious of the struggle
within him, he stood fast. Then, moving back a step, he gazed
earnestly at her.
She looked up at him ; her eyes were crystal-clear. The same
unrest, the same joy, pure and profound, possessed them both.
Then ‘Yes,’ he said at last.
48
Sunday, August 2
MME DE FONTANIN’s HOMECOMING
Due in at Paris shortly before five in the afternoon, the
‘Simplon Express’ did not reach Laroche Junction till after
II p.m. There it was promptly relegated to a siding so as to
leave the main line free for army supply trains. Composed
almost entirely of third-class carriages, the train was packed,
with thirteen or fourteen passengers wedged into compartments
intended to take ten. At one in the morning, after much shunt-
ing and several false starts, it drew out laboriously from
I.aroche. Three a.m. found it feeling its way through Melun
station, soon after leaving which it came to a stop on the Seine
bridge. Night was waning and the bend of the river glimmered
faintly in the dusk; lines of street-lamps twinkling across the
662
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
dawn-mist revealed the nearness of the city. Little by little,
behind the hills, a pale sheen was spreading up the sky, and
against the light a long line of moving forms came into view, a
regiment on the march along the river bank.
At last, at half-past four, after innumerable delays and
stoppages in tunnels, whistling incessantly and pulling up at
every signal, as it crawled through the suburbs, the train drew
up in a platformless siding three hundred yards from the Paris
terminus. ■
Mme. de Fontanin joined the stream of passengers whom
railway employees had bundled out of the train on to the
ballast and were shepherding along the permanent way
towards the station. The heavy suit-case she was carrying hit
her ankles at every step and made her stagger.
When she had left Vienna in one of the last trains conveying
foreigners to Italy, the city had been in a fever of war-activity.
She had been travelling for three days, had changed trains
seven times, and had not slept for three nights. Nevertheless
she had succeeded in getting the charges against her husband
withdrawn, and the name of -F ontanin was not to appear in
the proceedings.
The Gare de Lyon looked more like a bivouac than a railway
terminus. Red-trousered men were everywhere and she had to
thread her way between piles of arms. At every turn she came
against barriers guarded by sentries, and was compelled to
retrace her steps a dozen times before finally leaving the
station. Her haunting anxiety for her son was intensified by the
sight of all these men in uniform. She had had no news of him
since her departure; but, she consoled herself, there would
certainly be letters awaiting her at home. What destiny lay in
store for him? she wondered. A picture rose before her of her
soldier son in his smart uniform, his helmet flashing in the early
light as he reined-in his horse beside some frontier boundary-
post, ready to defend his country in her hour of peril. He is in
God’s keeping, she mused, and to fear for him would be unfaith
in Providence.
No taxis or buses were to be found outside the station. No
matter, she could very well walk home ; the joy of feeling so
663
SUMMER, 1914
near her goal made her almost forget how tired she was. But
what about her luggage? Outside the cloak-room she had seen
a waiting line of people over a hundred strong. On the far side
of the wide square facing the station she descried an open cafe ;
with an effort she carried the heavy bag across to it. The tables
were in disorder, the waiters half asleep, and, though the sun
was getting high, several lamps were still on ; evidently the cafe,
regulations notwithstanding, had remained open all night. The
girl at the cash-desk, moved to pity by the white-haired lady’s
pleading smile, agreed to look after the valise for her, and,
relieved of her burden, Mme. de Fontanin set out homewards.
At last she was near the end of her tribulations ; in half an hour
or so she would be back at home, with Jenny, sipping her
morning tea. The prospect gave her a new lease of energy.
On that morning of the second of August, the streets of Paris
were, despite the early hour, so full of people that she was
surprised to find the street door closed. Her watch had stopped ;
as she walked past the concierge’s room, the curtains of which
were drawn, she made a hasty guess at the time — half-past five
or earlier. Jenny’s asleep, she thought, as she climbed the stairs
to the flat; she’ll have put up the chain — I wonder if she’ll
hear the door-bell.
Before ringing, on the off-chance, she tried her key in the
lock. The door opened at the first turn ; it was not even double-
locked.
The first thing her eyes fell on in the hall was a man’s hat,
a black felt hat. Could it be Daniel’s? Impossible. All the doors
stood open. A sudden panic seized her. She took a few steps
forward. At the end of the corridor the light was on in the
kitchen. What did it mean? Could she be dreaming? Her mind
seemed to have gone blank ; she steadied herself against the wall
and listened. Not a sound. It looked as if the flat were empty.
What about that hat, though — and the light on in the kitchen?
Burglars? Without thinking she began walking down the
corridor. Suddenly at the open door of Daniel’s bedroom she
stopped short, stared aghast. On the sofa lay two bodies locked
in a close embrace.
For a second the still more horrible idea of murder glanced
664
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
across her mind. A second only, for at once she recognized the
faces nestling on the rumpled cushions; Jenny was sleeping in
Jacques’ arms.
Hurriedly she shrank back into the shadows of the corridor,
pressing her hand to her bosom as though the clamour of her
heart might betray her presence. Her one thought was to
escape, to banish from her sight that hideous humiliation,
theirs and hers.
She tip-toed hastily back into the hall. A sudden faintness
came over her ; her limbs seemed giving way beneath her. She
felt inclined to wonder if she had not been the victim of an
hallucination, till her eyes fell again on Jacques’ hat insolently
lording it on the hall-table. Then, bracing herself, she opened
the door softly, softly drew it to behind her, and clinging to the
banisters walked, step by dragging step, down the interminable
flights of stairs.
And now . . .? To get the street-door opened would she have
to knock up the concierge, give her name, tell of her return,
account for this precipitate departure? As it happened, the
concierge, wakened presumably by her arrival, had got up and
was dressing. There was a light behind the curtains and the
street-door stood open. She crept out like an escaping thief
She had no idea where to go, where to seek for refuge.
Crossing the street, she entered the public gardens. No one was
about. Wearily she dropped on to the nearest seat. About her
all was silence, the limpid calm of a summer dawn. The only
sound was a remote, incessant drone of lorries and transport-
waggons rumbling down the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
Mme. de Fontanin made no effort to understand; she did not
even speculate as to what could have been happening during
her absence, or how things could have come to that pass.
Indeed, coherent thinking was beyond her. But she still could
see, and the picture hovering before her mind’s eye had all the
vividness of reality — the crumpled cushions on the sofa, the
pale gleam of Jenny’s bare foot in the dawnlight filtering
through the curtain, Jacques’ arm round her neck, their atti-
tude of languorous abandon, and, lingering on their lips
drawn near in sleep, an expression of rapturous, half-anguished
665
SUMMER, 1914
ecstasy. Ashamed and scandalized though she was, she could
not help murmuring, ‘How nice they looked !’ Already her
indignation, her first reaction of disgust was being tempered
by that other sentiment so deeply ingrained in her : her respect
for others’ freedom of action and personal responsibility, for
human destiny. . . .
It almost seemed as if Jacques had grown dimly aware in
sleep that something had stirred in the flat ; his eyelids fluttered,
he opened his eyes. In a flash it all came back to him. Before
resting on Jenny’s sleepbound face, his gaze roved over a bare
foot, the soft curve of a breast, a shoulder. What sadness, he
thought, is in the set of her young lips ; how those calm features
seem marked by suffering! By suffering and yet by infinite
repose— like the death-mask of a child whose last agony has
been intense.
Holding his breath, he kept his eyes fixed on the tormented
lips, and for the while his love was mastered by a vast com-
passion, by remorse and apprehensions for the days to come.
They were puppets of fatality — no, not of fatality ; he had all
along intended this should happen, he alone had sought it.
From the first he had marked Jenny down as his prey. As a boy
at Maisons-Laffitte it was he who had thrust himself upon her,
forced her love — only to take flight immediately, leaving her
to her despair. And now, this summer, once more he had
returned to the attack, just when she was beginning to regain
her peace of mind, to forget. Now the irreparable had happened ;
a week ago she could still have lived without him. No longer
was that possible. Henceforth she was his, must follow where
he led. Towards what unknown, what desperate adventure?
Without him now she would find no savour in life. And with
him — would she be happy? No; only too well he knew it.
Antoine was right: he was not the kind of man to bring
happiness to another.
The thought of Antoine slewed his gaze round towards the
clock. He had to see his brother off this morning. Twenty to
six. In five minutes he must be up.
666
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
Through the open window came an intermittent rumble;
regiments, transport waggons, artillery trains were passing
through the city. War was there beside them, sounding its
malevolent reveille with the break of day. August the second.
Paris had wakened to a world at war.
He sat up, listened attentively, staring straight before him,
his brows clammy with sweat. Now and then the sounds died
away, and a tense silence followed ; a silence broken only by
the twittering of birds and the rustle of wind in the tree-tops.
Then in the distance the ominous rumble set in again. Another
regiment was debouching into the boulevard ; the tramp of
marching feet drew nearer, swelled to a steady roar that
crowded out the silence, drowning the small, gay sounds of
birds, jarring the bright air with its ponderous rhythm.
Very gently he slipped his arm again round Jenny’s shoulders
and drew her sleeping form towards him. He felt her body
suddenly stiffening up as flesh touched flesh, and heard her
whisper, ‘No dear — please? But then her eyelids parted; a
tender, timid smile grew on her lips and slowly, very slowly,
the fear died from her eyes. For a moment they stayed thus,
linked in each other’s arms, their limbs quivering a little with
memories of the night. But their memories were not the same.
When Jacques tightened his embrace, Jenny instinctively
shrank away ; the fear of suffering again paralysed her emotion.
At last, vanquished by love, by weakness, by the thrill of self-
sacrifice no less than her own desire, she yielded. Deliberately
yielded — but to her act of self-surrender she imparted just
enough passion, and even joy, for Jacques to be misled and fail
to guess the dread, the resignation and effort of the will that
lay behind it. . . .
Leaning back in the seat, her hands folded on her lap, Mme.
de Fontanin was gazing vaguely into the distance, too tired for
thought, unaware of the lapse of time.
The morning sun shone bright, birds were singing everywhere,
and the garden with its greenery and flowers and statues
casting their long shadows on the grass, seemed like a neutral
haven from the world’s unrest. Of the men and women who
hurried past across the avenue none came near or cast a glance
667
SUMMER, 1914
at the lonely woman in mourning sitting by herself. The trees
hid from her the windows of her flat, but she could see beyond
a shrubbery the front door of the building.
Suddenly she lowered her head, let down her veil. Jacques,
followed by Jenny, had appeared in the doorway. They were
too far off to recognize her. When after some moments she
looked up again, they were walking rapidly away.
She drew a deep breath ; the blood was racing wildly in her
veins. Haggard-eyed she watched the two receding forms till
they were out of sight. For a little while she sat on, without the
heart to move. At last she rose and almost briskly — the long
wait, in spite of all, had rested her a little — started walking
home.
49
Sunday, August 2
ANTOINE JOINS HIS REGIMENT
‘You’d better stay here and rest,’ Jacques had said to Jenny.
‘I’m going to see Antoine off After that I’ll say good-bye to
Mourlan, and look in at the C.G.T. and Humanite offices. I’ll
be back here to fetch you somewhere around noon.’
But Jenny would hear nothing of this programme. She was
quite determined not to stay in the flat by herself
‘And how about your packing? And the famous tidying-up
you were talking about yesterday? Why, you’ll never be ready
in time for the evening train,” he added teasingly.
She smiled. There was something quite new in her smile, and
a shy, sensuous languor misted her gaze.
‘Oh, I’ve my morning all fixed up. I’m going to have another
look at that little garden, our garden, beside St. Vincent’s
668
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
Church. You can meet me there, after you’ve seen your brother
off at the station, or later, if you prefer. That all right, Jacques
. . . dear?’
They agreed to walk together across the Luxembourg
Gardens to Antoine’s place. After that, she would go to St.
Vincent’s Church and wait patiently for him to rejoin her in
the garden. She ran to her room to dress.
Antoine had left Anne at three in the morning.
Unable to resist a nostalgic craving to see her once again,
he had indulged in this last joyless joy — without illusions, like
the condemned man taking his last repast before he mounts the
scaffold. But Anne’s outburst of wild despair as he said good-
bye, and his own regret for having thus weakly yielded to
desire, had left him profoundly shaken. He had returned in the
small hours and spent the rest of the night on his feet, turning
out drawers, burning old letters and the like, and enclosing
small sums of money in envelopes marked with the names of
various recipients-to-be : M. Chasle, the maids. Mile, de Waize
— not forgetting the two young orphans living in the Rue de
Verneuil : Robert Bonnard, the ‘fly’ little office-boy and his
brother. For he had kept in touch with them, if intermittently,
and did not wish them to find themselves stranded in the
financial chaos of the first weeks of the war. Then he had
written a long letter to Gise advising her to stay in England,
and another letter to Jacques — addressed to Geneva, for he
was convinced that, after what had passed between them on
the previous day, his brother would not come to bid him good-
bye. In a few affectionate phrases he told Jacques how sorry he
was to have wounded him, and begged him to write now and
then.
Then he had gone to his dressing-room and put on his
uniform. Once in uniform, he felt his calm returning — as if
he had taken the plunge and the worst was over.
As he buckled on his leggings he mentally recapitulated all
he had planned to do before his departure. Nothing had been
overlooked. A comforting thought, that added to his self-
669
SUMMER, 1914
composure. It suddenly struck him that a good many more
things would be needed if he was to carry out efficiently his
duties as M.O. in the field. Promptly he bundled out the
contents of his field medical chest — though he had given much
carp and thought to packing it the night before — and replaced
the greater part of his personal effects, clothing and even the
books which in a moment of weakness he had decided to take
with him, by everything he could find in his cupboards in the
way of bandages, compresses, forceps, syringes, anaesthetics
and disinfectants.
The two maids had been up and about for some hours, and
were roaming in the passages. Leon had already left Paris;
before joining his regiment he had wanted to go to his home-
town to say good-bye to ‘the old folk.’
Adrienne entered and announced that breakfast was served
in the dining-room. Her eyes were red. She begged Antoine to
find room in his kit for a cold roast chicken, wrapped in paper,
that she had brought with her. . . .
As he was rising from the breakfast-table there was a ring at
the bell. His eyes sped to the door and an affectionate smile
lit up his face. Could it be Jacques?
Jacques it was. He halted in the doorway. Antoine went up
to him, rather awkwardly. Both were tongue-tied with emotion
and they shook hands in silence, as if nothing had passed
between them on the previous day.
At last Jacques managed to get out a few words.
‘I was afraid I’d be too late. Were you just going to start?’
‘Yes. It’s seven. Time to be moving.’
He did his best to steady his voice. With a would-be careless
gesture he picked up his service cap and put it on. It did not
fit and sat comically perched on the top of his head. Had his
head grown since his last period of military service? he won-
dered. Or was he wearing his hair longer nowadays? Catching
sight of himself in the hall mirror, he frowned. As clumsily he
buckled on his belt, his eyes lingered on the familiar scene, in
a last leave-taking of home, civilian life — his pre-war self. But
always they strayed back to the unflattering reflection in the
glass.
670
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
The two maids who had been hovering in the background,
watching him, burst into loud sobs. Vexed though he was,
Antoine conjured up a smile and shook hands with each.
‘Now then, you two, what’s all the fuss about?’
His martial tone did not ring quite true. Noticing it, to cut
things short, he turned to Jacques.
‘Lend us a hand with this contraption, like a good chap.’
Each gripping a handle of the medicine-chest, they walked
on to the landing. As they crossed the threshold a corner of the
chest grazed the open door, scoring a long furrow in the newly
varnished woodwork. Noticing it, Antoine made an involuntary
gesture of annoyance, promptly amended to one of unconcern.
No moment, perhaps, brought home to him more vividly than
this the r 'lis past life and the days to come.
They w<. .he two flights of stairs without exchanging
a word. Antome telt half-stifled in his stiff collar and tight-
fitting tunic, and his service boots seemed made of lead. By the
time they reached the foot of the stairs he was quite out of breath.
‘Silly of me!’ he panted. ‘I’d quite forgotten about the lift!’
Foreseeing that no taxis would be available, he had decided
to use his own car. Victor, his chauffeur, had been called up
for service in a Motor Transport Unit so he took with him an
elderly mechanic from a neighbouring garage to drive the
car back.
The concierge, in a white dressing-jacket, was waiting under
the portico to see him off.
‘Oh Monsieur Antoine !’ she whimpered.
‘Good-bye, see you again soon!’ he cried cheerfully; then
after installing the mechanic in the back of the car and Jacques
in the seat beside him, took the wheel.
The streets were getting crowded already. The scavenging
services had partially broken down and unemptied refuse-bins
stood in the doorways.
On the road beside the Seine the car had to make a long
halt to allow a column of lorries and dismantled buses with
army drivers to go by. They were held up again at the Pont
Royal, where the middle of the road was blocked by a crowd
of people gazing skywards and waving their hats enthusiastic-
671
SUMMER, 1914
ally. Leaning out to look up, Jacques saw five airplanes in
V-formation flying very low and heading North-East. The
tricolour badges on the lower wings were plainly visible.
In the Rue de Rivoli between two lines of spectators, a regi-
ment of colonial infantry in field-service uniform marched by
without a band. The silence was impressive and, as the com-
manding officers rode past, the men in the crowd raised their
hats.
The balconies in the Avenue de I’Opera were gay with flags.
They passed a Red Cross ambulance unit, then a detachment
of soldiers in fatigue coats, carrying picks and shovels. At the
Place de TOpera they had to halt again, as an artillery train,
followed by ten armoured cars, roared down the boulevard
towards the Bastille. On the roof of the opera-house workmen
were busy installing searchlights in view of a possible night- raid
by Taubes.
Despite the efforts of the police to disperse them, excited
mobs were massed in front of Austrian and German shops that
had been looted during the night. The pavement beside the
Cristallerie de BohSme was strewn with broken glass and china.
The Brasserie Viennoise looked as if a storming' party had gone
through it; the frontage had been completely wrecked and
within was a chaos of shattered mirrors, tables and chairs
reduced to matchwood.
Silently Jacques noted these earliest symptoms of patriotism
running amuck. He found these street-scenes and the expres-
sions of people’s faces extraordinarily interesting. He would
have liked to say something to his brother, but nothing came ;
he hoped his silence would seem due to the presence of the
garage-hand behind them. Meanwhile thoughts were racing
through his mind in feverish haste : of Jenny, of their night
together and their impending journey to Geneva. . . . But then
— what next? Always his mind came up>against the problem,
and found no issue. The ‘Talking Shop,’ Meynestrel. . . . No,
on no account would he let himself be drawn back into that
life of futile conspiracies, vain palaverings, eternal marking
time. Not words but deeds he wanted now ; a life of action with
all its perils.
672
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
Suddenly he gave a start. Antoine, who had been driving at
a snail’s pace, sounding the horn at every moment to clear a
way through the crowds that kept swarming over the roadway,
had seized the opportunity of a momentary halt to take one
hand off the wheel and, without a word, without even turning
his head, to lay his hand gently on Jacques’ knee. But before
Jacques had a chance of responding to this fraternal token of
affection, the car had started moving again and Antoine had
withdrawn his hand.
The Rue de Maubeuge was black with men about to join
their regiments, pressing forward up the hill that led to the
station ; many were accompanied by wives and parents.
‘What a hurry they’re in!’ Jacques’ voice betrayed his
amazement.
‘And the chances are,’ Antoine remarked ironically, with a
forced laugh, ‘that all these poor devils will have to wait half
the day or longer, parked on a platform, before they are
entrained.’
Yes, Jacques thought, they want to report on time, they’re
eager to start their war with a punctual kowtow to discipline !
How little they must realize that they’re the greater number
and could, if they chose, have the last word about it all !
A wooden paling run up during the night, and picketed by
troops, barred access to the station. There was no question of
driving up to it, so dense was the crowd, and Antoine stopped
the car and alighted. Jacques helped him across the road with
his field chest. The narrow entrance was guarded by an
infantry platoon with fixed bayonets. Only mobilized men were
allowed to pass the barrier.
A. sergeant-major was inspecting the reservists’ small-books.
Glancing up, he saw Antoine’s bands, saluted, and at once
detailed a private to carry the officer’s kit.
Antoine turned his head and looked at Jacques. Each read
the same question in the other’s eyes. ‘Shall we meet again?’
And both at the same moment felt their tears welling up uncon-
trollably. All their youth, every detail, trivial yet unique, of
their home life together in earlier days, stored up in their
memories and theirs alone, flashed into consciousness like
673
z
SUMMER, 1914
pictures on a screen. Simultaneously they opened their arms,
and clumsily embraced each other. The peak of Antoine’s field
service cap jogged Jacques’ felt hat. Years and years had passed
since they had thus embraced — indeed they had never done so
since those childhood days which memory had just now brought
back to them so vividly.
The man detailed to carry Antoine’s kit had shouldered it
and was beginning to move away. Hastily Antoine freed him-
self, and now his one idea was to follow the man, not to lose
sight of his field-chest — the only thing in this new world that
still was truly his. He had ceased looking at his brother, and
was stretching out his arm fumblingly. His hand found Jacques’
and clasped it fiercely, desperately ; then, stumbling a little, he
joined the stream of people entering the station.
Blinded by his tears, jostled by new arrivals, Jacques backed
to the paling and leaned against it. One by one, without a
pause, the men called up were being passed in. All looked alike
and all were young. All had put on the old clothes they could
best dispense with, caps and heavy shoes; each carried slung
across his back a bulging canvas bag and a brand-new haver-
sack from which the neck of a bottle and a -hunk of bread
protruded. Their faces wore a look of mournful resignation,
the look of men who have lived down despair and fear.
Jacques watched them crossing the street, small-book in hand;
already they were alone, and yet, halfway across, some paused,
glancing back to the pavement they had just left, to wave a
hand, or hearten with a jaunty smile the man or woman watch-
ing them with anguished eyes. Then, setting their jaws, they
strode forward to the opening in the barrier, into the ‘rat-trap.’
‘Don’t stand about, my lad. Move on, there !’
The ‘regular’ on sentry-go along the barrier, rifle at the slope,
his stubby fingers clamped upon the butt, was a strapping lad
with an incipient moustache, boyish though rather shifty eyes,
and a portentous frown betokening his sense of the importance
of his duties.
Jacques complied and moved back to the road.
A luxurious car drove past with an inscription on the wind-
screen : Free Rides for Mert/Called up. The chauffeur was in livery.
674
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
Half-a-dozen youths with haversacks lolled inside, yelling at the
top of their voices : ‘We want Alsace ! We want Lorraine !’
As Jacques stepped on to the- pavement, he saw beside him a
man and woman bidding each other good-bye, gazing into each
other’s eyes for the last time. A little boy of four was clinging
to the woman’s skirt, dancing round her, singing to himself^
delighted with this unexpected outing. The man stooped,
snatched up the boy and kissed him — so roughly that the
youngster flew into a temper, kicked and struggled till his father
put him down again. The woman did not move, said nothing.
Her hair straggling down her neck, cheeks wet with tears, she
stared at her husband with insatiable eyes. As if he feared that
she would fling herself on him and there would be no shaking
her off, instead of taking her in his arms, he drew back a step,
his eyes still fixed on hers. Then abruptly he turned on his heel
and strode towards the station. His wife did not try to call
him back, or linger watching his receding form ; she, too,
turned abruptly and walked rapidly away. The child trailing
after her tripped up and almost fell; she reached down and
hoisted him on to her shoulder, without stopping. She gave
the impression of being in a desperate hurry to get back to her
home, her empty home, where at last, behind closed doors, she
could cry her heart out.
Jacques looked away, profoundly touched by the little scene.
Then he fell to roaming aimlessly in the neighbouring streets,
but, try as he might to keep away, something drew him back
time and again to this tragedy-laden corner of Paris, to which
that morning many and many a victim was hastening to keep
his rendez-vous with fate, severing his life from every human tie.
In those sad, courageous eyes his eyes sought for an answering
glance, a single look in which, behind the stolid grief, he might
discern a glimmer of the pent-up indignation that clenched his
fists in his pockets and set him trembling with baffled fury. In
vain. Diverse as were the expressions on the faces he scanned,
all had the same air of discouragement, the same forlorn
passivity. Here and there he caught a gleam of reckless heroism ;
but elsewhere only a blind acceptance of the sacrifice imposed,
the same craven or unconscious betrayal of personal independ-
675
SUMMER, 1914
ence. At that moment, indeed, it seemed to him that what little
was left of liberty in the world had taken refuge in himself alone.
And suddenly this thought made his heart swell with pride
and a sense of power. His faith, anyhow, was inviolate as ever,
and it exalted him above the herd. Misunderstood though he
might be, an outcast — yet he felt stronger, single-handed, in
his rebellion than all these people doped with lies and tamely
acquiescent. Justice and truth were in him ; reason and the
dark forces of the future, on his side. This momentary defeat
of pacifist ideals could not impair their grandeur or imperil
their final victory. No force in the world could prevent what
was happening to-day from being an absurdity, a monstrous
error — even though millions of victims chose to endorse it, to
accept it with courageous stoicism. ‘No force in the world,’
he told himself, in a rush of mingled confidence and despair,
‘can prevent a true idea from being true. A day will come, when,
despite these setbacks; despite conspiracies to stifle it, truth will
break through and triumph.’
But how, in a world at war, was he to serve the cause of
truth? Determined to keep his freedom of action, he was quit-
ting France; but what would he make of his liberty?
His lukewarmness of the last few days as to the revolutionary
cause struck him now as weakness. He was inclined to cast the
blame upon his love. And now that Jenny had come back to
his thoughts, he was amazed to realize how easily and utterly
he had forgotten all about her during the past hour. Almost he
felt a grievance against her — for existing, awaiting him,
wresting him from the rapture of his lonely dream. ‘Supposing
she died suddenly,’ he thought, and for a moment, savoured
a grief that was half joy, joy for his independence given back
to him.
Less than ten minutes after Antoine had left home for the
station, a venerable four-wheeler, more in place in a museum
beside an old sedan-chair than in a Paris street, drew up at
the door.
The girl who stepped out of it cast a bewildered glance at
676
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
the hoardings and freshly painted walls, then paid the cabman,
picked up two valises lying on the seat, and walked rapidly to
the entrance.
The concierge peeped out of her doorway.
‘Why, bless us, it’s Miss Gise !’
From the consternation in her eyes Gise guessed she had
some bad news to impart.
‘What a shame, miss ! You’re just too late. Mr. Antoine left
a few minutes ago.’
‘Left?’
‘Why, yes, to join his regiment.’
Gise made no reply. Her gentle, trustful eyes grew misted;
she put the valises down beside her. On the small round face
that had now gone greyish-brown, making the dark strain in
her blood still more pronounced, a look of stupefaction seemed
to sit quite naturally, as if its pattern had been traced out ready
in advance. She had been spending her summer holidays, with
the other girls from her convent, at an English seaside resort,
and had followed what was happening in Europe in only the
vaguest way. It was not till the previous day that, on reading
in a paper that France was mobilizing, she had taken alarm
and, refusing to listen to advice, without even going back to
London, had rushed to Dover and caught the first boat across.
‘All the menfolk here have been called up, miss, like everyone
else. Leon left yesterday evening, so did Victor. There’s only
the servants, Adrienne and Clotilde, upstairs.’
Gise’s face lit up with relief. Adrienne and Clotilde had
stayed ; she felt no longer ‘lost.’ After all they had brought her
up and they stood for her family, all the family left to her. She
drew herself up determinedly and, preceded by the concierge
carrying her valises, walked towards the lift.
‘How everything’s been changed?’ she murmured, gazing at
the white staircase, the banisters.
Old, half-effaced images were crowding back into her brain,
fuddled a little by her sleepless night ; she felt more bewildered
in these ehanged surroundings where she looked in vain for
some familiar landmark than she would have been in a house
wholly unknown to her.
677
SUMMER, 1914
Half an hour later, having exchanged her travelling clothes
for a wrap of flowered cretonne and bedroom slippers, she had
settled down with the two maids in Antoine’s big dining-room,
with a steaming cup of chocolate and a plate of the thick
buttered toast of her childhood days in front of her. Resting
her arms on the table, she slowly stirred her chocolate, and
gave herself up childishly to the satisfaction of the moment. She
had never been particularly bright, and convent life in England,
with all the activities of each day kept to a strict routine,
had not developed her capacities for taking the initiative.
When she went slack as she did now, her rounded shoulders,
over-ripe bosom and rather flabby cheeks robbed her suddenly
of all the charm of youth. No longer ‘Blackie,’ the graceful
gipsy-like young creature, she brought to mind a plump
mulatto, thick-lipped and vacant-eyed — a woman of slave
blood, with all the fatalistic apathy of a servile race.
The two maids had not known what to do with themselves,
and Gise’s coming was a godsend. Sitting on either side of her,
they chattered away to their hearts’ content, laughing and
weeping turn by turn. They had much to tell Gise about her
aunt. Mile, de Waize; every other Sunday, as in duty bound,
they went to see her at the ‘Superannuates’ Home,’ bringing
a bag of caramels and bananas. Clotilde made no secret of the
fact that the old lady was getting ‘a bit soft in the head,’ and
took no interest now in anything except trivial happenings at
the Home. Sometimes she greeted her visitors almost rudely
and seemed to regard them as intruders about whose intentions
she had the gravest doubts. Usually she packed them off long
before the visiting hour was over so as not to miss her game
of bezique.
As Gise listened, her eyes grew blurred with tears.
‘I must go and see her before I leave,’ she sighed.
‘You’re leaving, Miss?’ both maids exclaimed at once.
They vehemently protested against her idea of returning to
England, and explained that Monsieur Antoine had left them
enough money to keep house for several months. Adrienne gave
a rosy picture of the life the three of them would have together
if Gise stayed on in Paris. She had cut out of the morning paper
678
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
an ‘Appeal to the Women of France,’ inviting them to aid in
the defence of their country. There were, it seemed, many
forms of useful war- work open to devoted Frenchwomen. They
could work in day-nurseries for the children of men at the
front, could form centres for distributing infants’ milk, could
cut bandages, join sewing-bees for making soldiers’ garments,
and so forth. Every woman was called on to ‘do her bit,’ and
of women’s work there was galore to choose from.
Gise beamed with pleasure; the idea delighted her. Here
was a chance of making herself useful.
Neither the concierge nor the maids had thought to mention
Jacques’ name. Gise, supposing him to be in Switzerland, put
no question. It was only two days later that a chance remark of
Clotilde’s apprised her that Jacques had been in Paris on the
day of her arrival. Still, she reflected, even had she learned this
sooner, would she have managed to get in touch with him?
No one knew his address. And anyhow would she even have
tried to see him again?
50
Sunday, August 2
JACqUES RESOLVES TO FIGHT WAR TO THE END
While he was going up the stairs to the Etendard office,
before even he had reached the landing, Jacques noticed a milk
jug on Mourlan’s door-mat.
‘That means he’s out !’ he exclaimed despondently.
He rang the bell. No answer. On the off-chance, he knocked
on the door three times, with intervals between each rap.
‘Who’s there?’
679
SUMMER, 1914
‘Thibault.’
The door opened. Mourlan was naked to the waist, his hair
and beard covered with soap.
‘Pardon !’ he exclaimed on seeing Jenny. ‘The lad ought to
have warned me he had a lady with him.’ He pushed the door
shut with his foot. ‘Have a seat, lady.’
A cane-seated chair stood by the door. Jenny sat down in
it at once.
The windows were closed and the air reeked of cardboard,
paste, saltpetre, dusty paper. Bundles of newspapers tied with
string lay everywhere, on the table, on a garden-seat, in a
battered tub. In a corner on the floor, beside a pan of sawdust,
an antiquated gas-meter, the pipes of which had been cut short
and hammered flat, thrust its squat bulk forward like the
stump of an amputated leg.
Mourlan had returned to his kitchen.
‘I’ve only just got back,’ he shouted as he soused his head
and shoulders under the tap ‘I been had for a mug, my lad !’
A moment later he reappeared, still scrubbing his head vigor-
ously with a towel; he had put on a clean shirt. ‘I spent the
whole night out in the streets — like the fathead' that I was. I
had the wind up proper. Mobilization, I says to myself, — that
means the cops getting busy, rounding us up. They could
search this place for all I cared. I’d made my arrangements,
see? They wouldn’t have found nothing. But as for getting
jugged — well I’d rather wait a bit. Oh, it ain’t that I mind that
much being put away for a while,’ he added with a roguish
look at Jenny. ‘I’ve never had such peace and quiet as the spells
I did in jug. If it hadn’t been for them I’d never have had the
time to think up my books, much less write ’em. No, but some-
how I didn’t like the idea of being in the first batch for the big
house. Yesterday the flatties were nosing round in all the kips
— at Pulter’s, at Guclpa’s; even at the Eglantine. They know
where to look. I’ll give ’em that ! Only it was just too bad ; they
didn’t find a thing ! Only Pierre Martin’s manifesto. An Appeal
to ,Commonsense, which they pinched just as the mates were
taking the bales from the printer’s. You haven’t heard the news
about Claisse, Robert Claisse, the chap on the Vie Ouvriere — a
680
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
youngster, who’d been permanently exempted from military
service? Well, it seems someone set the police on his tracks
because he’d written an anti-war leaflet, and he’s been put
away till the next exemption board has a look at him, and they
can pack him oflf to the front line. I heard about that last night.
That’s a warning for you, my boy, thinks I; don’t you be a
mug and let yourself get pinched. So I made myself scarce.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Well, I thought of lying low at one of the mates’ places.
Nothing doing. At Siron’s ’twouldn’t have been any better
than here. I looked in at old Guyot’s; drew a blank. Ditto for
Cottier, Lasseigne, Molini, Vallon. All the boys had done a
guy — same as me! So I mooched around town all night, on
my lonesome. And this morning when I bought the papers I
realized I’d been behaving like a silly old jackass. So I just
trotted home, and here I am 1’ He swung his shaggy-browed
eyes on Jacques. ‘Have you read the papers, lad?’
‘No.’
‘Eh?’
Mourlan's eyes roved to Jenny, came back to Jacques. He
seemed tracing a connexion between Jenny’s presence and the
fact that at ten in the morning on the day following mobilization
Jacques had not read the latest news. From the pocket of his
black overall, which was hanging on a nail, he took a sheaf of
newspapers. Gingerly, with the tips of his fingers, as if he
feared to soil his hands, he drew one paper from the wad,
letting the others drop on the tiled floor.
‘Have a look at this, my young friend; it’ll amuse you, if
you’ve the heart to laugh to-day. Personally, though I’ve taken
some pretty hard knocks in my time, this one came like a punch
below the belt. Think of it! Merle and Almereyda’s paper,
Le Bonnet Rouge, turned mouthpiece overnight of Poincare and
his gang! Well, wonders will never cease. . . . Yes, read it
out, lad !’
Bubbling over with rage, Mourlan slipped on his black
overall while Jacques read in a low voice.
‘ “We are glad to announce, on high authority, that the
Government will not make use of the police List of Suspects.
68i z*
SUMMER, 1914
The Government has faith in the loyalty of the French people
and especially of the working class. It is common knowledge
that the Government has spared no efforts, and still is doing its
utmost, to preserve peace. The unequivocal declarations of the
most inveterate revolutionaries . . ’
‘ “The most inveterate revolutionaries,” ’ Mourlan muttered.
‘Grr ! The swine !’
‘ . . are such as fully to reassure the Government. Not one
Frenchman will fail to do his duty. By refraining from making
use of the List of Suspects, the Government shows its recogni-
tion of this fact.” ’
‘Well, my lad, what do you say to that? I had to read the
darned thing twice before I tumbled to what it really means.
Well, there’s no getting behind it; it means this. The French
proletariat is joining in their war so cheerfully, and the workers’
opposition is so little dangerous, that the Government’s dropped
the notion of interning suspects as a precautionary measure.
Got it? It’s as good as if they gave us revolutionaries a friendly
tweak o’ the ear and said, “Go to it, you young scallawags;
we’ll overlook your naughtiness ! Just toddle off and do your
duty at the front.” So our nice, kind Government does the
sporting thing, tears up the black-lists, chortles to itself, and
leaves the suspects at large. Because to-day, d’you see, the
suspects just don’t matter.’
He burst into a loud guffaw ; there was something terrifying
in the sight of the old, saint-like face twisted thus in bitter
mirth.
‘Suspects ! There ain’t any left. Got it? Well, you can guess
the sort of pledges our precious Party leaders had to give, for
the Government to feel so sure of their ground ! To risk on the
very first day of the war an act of generosity like that ! Aye, our
leaders, they’ve sold us nicely to the Government, damn their
souls! This time we’re done in good and proper, and there’s
no getting behind it. The General Staff has the whip hand. The
man that’s going to serve in the war isn’t to have a say no
longer ; that’s left to the men who run it.’
He took some paces forward, his hands locked behind his
back, under the billowing smock.
682
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
‘And yet, damn it all!’ he suddenly broke out, spinning
round and facing Jacques, ‘I simply can’t believe it! I can’t
believe we’re really down and out !’
Jacques gave a slight start.
‘Neither can I,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t believe there’s nothing
more to be done. Even as things are !’
‘Even as things are !’ Mourlan echoed. ‘And, better still,
in a few days’ or a few weeks’ time, once those poor devils have
had their “baptism of fire” as they call it. Oh, if only Kropotkin
were with us ! Or anyone who’d say the things that need to be
said, and found a way to get a hearing. Our comrades have
given in to-day because they’ve been stuffed with lies, because
their credulity has been exploited once again. But a mere trifle,
the least thing, might bring them to their senses, change the
whole position in a moment.’
Jacques sprang to his feet as if a whip had flicked his loins.
‘What? “A mere trifle,” you say? What mere trifle?’ He
strode on Mourlan. ‘What do you think could be done?
Tell me !’
His voice had gone so queer that Jenny turned and stared
at him, wide-mouthed, in sudden panic.
Mourlan, too, was startled and fixed his eyes on Jacques,
who said uncomfortably:
‘Yes, I wish you’d tell me; what exactly have you in mind?’
Mourlan shrugged his shoulders with a slightly embar-
rassed air.
‘What have I in mind? Just nonsense, likely as not. I let
my tongue run away with me, you know, lad — that’s how I
am! But the whole thing’s so damn’ silly that I can’t help
hoping still, hoping against hope, as they say. It’s plain as a
pikestaff that the peoples of the earth — our people just as much
as them against us — have been fooled. And — who knows? —
it might be enough . . .’
He broke off. Staring eagerly at the old man, Jacques
prompted :
‘It might be enough . . .?’
‘Oh, I ain’t a very clear idea, you know. But suppose sud-
denly, like a lightning-flash, there fell between the two front
683
SUMMER, 1914
lines a single ray of truth, scattering the fog of lies ! Suppose
all at once those poor damn’ fools facing each other in the
firing lines was to pull their wits together and tumble to it —
that they’d been had for mugs — don’t you think they’d rise
like one man, half mad with fury, and turn on the chaps who’d
fooled ’em and set ’em at each others’ throats?’
Jacques was blinking as if a burst of light had dazzled him.
Then, looking down, he walked back towards Jenny, without
seeming to see her, and sat down again.
There followed a moment of constrained silence — as if some
eerie happening had befallen, that all three had dimly appre-
hended but none had fully understood. Mourlan was the first
to speak again.
‘Anyhow the whole nation, it seems, is of one mind. In the
provinces all the socialist Town Councils have passed resolu-
tions declaring that the country is in peril, that it’s every French-
man’s duty to defend it, that Germany’s outlawed from the
ranks of civilization and so forth. See here !’ He picked up
the newspapers he had dropped on the floor. ‘Here’s the
C.G.T, manifesto. “To the Proletariat of France f it’s called. Do
you know what they’ve the brass to say, our C.G.T. friends?
“The turn of events has taken us unawares. The proletariat
has not realized with sufficient unanimity all the strenuous
efforts needed to preserve humanity from the horrors of war.”
Which means, in plain words : “There’s nothing to be done,
boys; you’re for it, and you got to see it through.” Then here’s
what the Railway Workers’ Union — the railwaymen, boy, just
think, our die-hard railwaymen — have thought fit to post on
every wall in Paris. “Comrades ! In this hour of common peril,
party differences are wiped out. Socialists, Trade Unionists and
Revolutionaries, all will join in frustrating Kaiser Wilhelm’s
knavish schemes, all will answer ‘Present!’ when they hear the
call of the Republic.” Wait a bit, though! There’s better to
come. What do you say to this? “An open letter to the Minister
of War.” And who do you think it’s signed by? Gustave Herve,
of all people! Listen. “Convinced that France has done her
utmost to avert war, I have the honour to request that I may
be enrolled in the first infantry regiment leaving for the fron-
684
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
tier.” And that’s that. Yes, my boy, that’s how they’re turning
their coats, our socialist champions. Our Herve, too, editor of
The Social War, who once declared there never was a country
in the world worthy of having one drop of the workers’ blood
shed in its defence ! So it comes to this, my lad : the Govern-
ment’s on velvet; they can shelve their Black List without a
qualm. They all been brought to heel, our faithful watchdogs
of the Revolution, one after the other.’
Someone knocked at the door.
‘Who’s there?’ Mourlan asked before opening.
‘Sir on.’
The new-comer was a man in the early fifties with a flat
face spanned by a grey moustache, a low, wide forehead, deeply
sunken nostrils. His eyes, set far apart, had an ironic twinkle.
The face gave an impression of quiet energy, tinctured with
disdain.
Jacques knew him by sight; he was the only man often to
be seen about with Mourlan. Formerly a militant Trade
Unionist, Siron had done several spells in jail for his revolu-
tionary activities, but for some years past had been standing
apart from the movement. He, like Mourlan, belonged to the
group of socialist free-lances, men of shrewd wits and haughty
independence, of uncompromising standards and few illusions,
more devoted to the Cause than to their comrades, who had
no truck with fools and, while universally respected, were looked
askance at for their aloofness, and apt to be envied for their
obvious superiority.
‘Take a chair,’ said Mourlan, though the only chair available
was occupied by Jenny. ‘Have you seen “their” papers?’
The slight lift of Siron’s shoulders seemed intended to suggest
at once his contempt for the Press, and the fact that he had
not come here to discuss events.
‘There’s a meeting to-night at the Jean-Bart restaurant.’ His
eyes were fixed on the old printer. ‘I said I’d let you know.
You must come.’
‘Can’t say as I’m so keen on it,’ Mourlan grunted. ‘Don’t
I know just what they’re going to . . . ?’
‘That’s not the point,’ Siron cut in. ‘I’ll be there myself.
685
SUMMER, 1914
There’s some things I’ve got to tell ’em. And I want you to
stand by me.’
‘That’s another matter. You’ve things to tell ’em, eh? What
things?’
Siron did not reply at once. He gazed at Jacques, then Jenny ;
went to the window, opened it a few inches, then came back
to Mourlan.
‘Various things. Things that need to be done and which, it
seems, no one has the least idea of. We’re in a nasty jam, I
grant you, but that’s no reason to stand by with folded arms
and let them have it all their own damned way.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that if the sociahst and Trade Union leaders think
fit to join up with the Government, the least thing they can do
is, in return for their collaboration, to insist on getting definite
promises that the Government will do something for the men
they represent. Don’t you agree with me? This war has created,
in fact, revolutionary conditions. Well, let’s turn ’em to our
advantage. Jaur^ would have seen to that, you bet! He’d have
wangled concessions for the proletariat sure enough. And that’ld
be always so much to the good. This war’s going to impose
sacrifices, restrictions, on everybody. The least one can demand,
on behalf of the workers, is for them to have a voice in the
measures that are going to be taken. There’s still time to lay
down our conditions. The Government, just now, can’t do
without us. Well let’s insist on a quid pro quo. Don’t you
agree?’
‘ “Conditions,” you say. Give an example.’
‘For instance, we must compel them to nationalize all the
munition factories, so’s to prevent the owners from profiteering
at the expense of the people who’re being packed off to the
shambles. And the management of the factories must be made
over to the Unions.’
‘Not such a bad idea,’ Mourlan said.
‘Another thing is to prevent a rise in prices. It’s started
already — as we all know. Personally, I only see one way of
stopping it, and that’s to force the Government to take over all
the stocks of foodstuffs and the hke, and arrange for their
686
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
distribution — cutting out, of course, the middlemen and
profiteers.’
‘That’s a pretty tall order, ain’t it? It’ld need the hell of a
lot of organizing.’
‘Why? The staff is here, all ready to their hand. All they’d
need would be to turn the job over to the co-operative societies ;
they’re going concerns, and they know the ropes. Don’t you
agree? Well, all that’s got to be diseussed. But, now that martial
law’s been proclaimed in the whole of France, even in Algeria,
the least we can do is to see it helps to protect the little man
against the sharks !’
He was stumping up and down the room, which echoed with
his clear, level tones. His remarks were meant for Mourlan
only, but now and then he cast a fleeting glance at Jacques
or Jenny. Beads of sweat stood out on his handsome
forehead.
Jacques kept silence. Though he seemed to be attending
closely and his eyes were glowing, he was not listening. Lost
in the maze of his own thoughts, his mind was leagues away
from Siron’s projects for the nationalization of factories and
the rest of it. What was it Mourlan had said? ‘Suppose suddenly,
like a lightning-flash, there fell between the two front lines just
a single ray of truth, scattering the fog of lies!’
Taking advantage of an interruption by the old printer of
his friend’s harangue, Jacques rose, beckoning to Jenny.
‘Off already?’ Mourlan said. ‘Shall we see you at the Jean
Bart to-night?’
Jacques seemed to waken from a dream.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Foreigners leaving France have got to be
out of Paris by to-night at the latest. We’re off to Switzerland,
she and I. I came to say good-bye.’
Mourlan gazed at Jenny, then at Jacques.
‘Ah? So you’ve made your minds up? To Switzerland, you
said? Good for you.’ Suddenly he looked extremely moved,
though he believed he was concealing his emotion. ‘Well, well,’
he added gruffly, ‘off you go ! And try to put in some good work
for us over there. Good luck to you, children I’
Jacques felt his mind in such a tumult of excitement and
687
SUMMER, 1914
unformulated thoughts, that for the moment he had but one
desire — to be alone.
‘Now Jenny dear, do please be sensible,’ he said once they
were in the street. He had taken Jenny’s arm, and his tone was
gentle but firm. ‘You’ve still heaps of things to do before
to-night, and I can see how tired you are. Go home now. No,
don’t refuse. You absolutely must have some rest. It’s a quarter
past ten. I’ll see you home, and then go to the “//Mwa” by
myself. Then, there may be some formalities about your leaving
France; I’d better make enquiries. A couple of hours will see
me through all that. . . . Do you agree?’
‘Yes.’
What he had said about her tiredness was quite true. She
felt feverish, exhausted, bruised all over. For a long time she
had sat waiting in the little garden by the church, on a hard
bench that made her back ache more than ever. It was the place
where Jacques had said, ‘No one has ever loved before as I love
you.’ Lost in a day dream, she had gone over in memory all
that had taken place on that eventful evening, so near and yet
already so remote, and on the days that had followed — up to
the unthinkable, shattering climax of the previous night. . . .
And when, after two hours of waiting, she had seen Jacques
coming down the steps, with a harassed, combative look on
his face and absent gaze, she had realized with a cruel pang of
grief, that their minds were not in unison. She had not dared
to tell him of her reverie, and had listened patiently to his
account of Antoine’s departure. Then she had let him take her
on foot to Mourlan’s lodgings. Now she was at the end of her
tether; too utterly worn out to think of accompanying him
elsewhere. All she wanted was to go home, to let her aching
limbs relax amongst the cushions, to rest. . . .
Though trams were few and far between, they were fortunate
enough to catch one, after a short wait, that took them as far
as the top of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Jacques helped her
to walk to the street-door.
‘Good-bye for the present. I’ll be back between one and two.’
With a smile he added : ‘And this evening we’ll have our last
little dinner in a Paris restaurant.’
688
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
But he had not gone twenty yards, when he heard an
anguished, hardly recognizable voice calling to him from behind.
‘Jacques !’
He swung round, and in two strides was beside her.
‘Mother’s back!’ She stared at him, wild-eyed. ‘The con-
cierge stopped me as I was going in. Mother came back this
morning.’
They gazed helplessly at each other, their minds had suddenly
gone blank. Jenny’s first thought had been for the disorder in
which they had left the flat, what with Daniel’s bed unmade
and Jacques’ toilet articles lying about in the bathroom.
Abruptly she came to a decision, and clutched his arm.
‘Come 1’ A dark, inscrutable look had settled on her face.
‘Come upstairs with me, Jacques!’
‘Jenny !’
‘Come !’ she repeated, almost harshly.
She seemed so determined and he felt his mind so fogged, his
will-power so relaxed, that he made no further protest.
She led the way up the flights of stairs almost at a run ; she
had forgotten her exhaustion and her one idea now seemed to
be to get it over as quickly as possible.
But at the door she stopped, faltering a little, as she put her
latchkey to the lock. In the hush that followed, each heard the
other’s laboured breathing. Then, bracing herself, she opened
the door, caught Jacques’ wrist and, tightening her fingers on
it, drew him after her into the flat.
51
Sunday, August 2
JACqUES AND JENNY CONFRONT MME. DE FONTANIN
Mme. DE Fontanin had spent the morning at home, the
prey of an unrest such as she had never known before, even at
the darkest moments of her married life.
689
SUMMER, 1914
By a kindly chance the door of Daniel’s room was shut, and
she might almost have managed to persuade herself that she
had been the victim of a nightmare, had she not felt a sudden
desire for a cup of tea, which took her to the kitchen. On
catching sight of the table laid for two, instinctively she had
closed her eyes, fled from the place, and taken refuge in her
bedroom.
That first phase of prostration had been followed by one of
febrile, irrational activity. Finally, when she had changed from
her travelling clothes into an old tea-gown, after tidying up
the room and performing the series of more or less futile tasks
she had set herself, she resolved to keep absolutely quiet for a
while, and settled into her favourite chair beside the window.
At all costs she felt she must regain her self-possession. But the
little Bible, which she knew would help her to it, was in her
valise. Rising, she went to the bookshelf and took the old
Family Bible, the margins of which had been filled by her
father, Pastor de Fontanin, with pencilled notes and com-
ments. Opening it at random, she set herself to read. But her
mind was restive, it would not settle on the text and, despite all
her efforts, wandered off into a phantasmagoria of scenes and
fancies in which thoughts of Daniel grotesquely mingled with
her memories of the business men she had dealt with at Vienna,
of the complications of her journey, and railway-stations packed
with troops. But behind the phantom rout of her imaginings
always there loomed up a vision of Jenny and Jacques as she
had seen them, sleeping in each other’s arms. The rumble of
troops marching down the near-by boulevards seemed reverber-
ating in her brain, like a grim accompaniment to her thoughts.
For the first time in her life a feeling of sheer panic, against
which she was unable to react, overwhelmed her; a feeling of
being caught by a hurricane, swept helplessly away. The
Spirit of Evil was let loose in the world, the powers of dark-
ness and disorder were spreading havoc in Europe — and in
her home.
Then she heard sounds in the hall, footsteps approaching up
the passage. Her face grew rigid ; she had not the strength to
rise, the most she could do was to straighten herself up in the
690
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
chair. The door opened; her cheeks pale as death under the
black veil, her eyes distraught, Jenny entered.
The familiar yet unlooked-for sight of her mother in her
flowered tea-gown placidly sitting in her usual chair, with the
Bible on her knees, stirred Jenny to the depths of her being. Her
whole past seemed, after long years of absence, to have suddenly
risen before her eyes and, without a thought for Jacques who
lagged behind wondering if he should follow, she ran across
the room and flung her arms round her mother. Then slipping
down on to the carpet, she pressed her forehead to her mother’s
dress.
‘Oh, mamma dear . . . !’
In a flash, love and pity had swept away Mme. de Fontanin’s
apprehensions ; in an access of indulgence her heart softened
towards the young people whose secret she had stumbled on so
dramatically, and now their conduct seemed no longer out-
rageous, but a very human lapse. Already she was stooping
towards the daughter who had come back to her, on the brink
of folding her in her arms, prepared to hear her confession,
weigh the consequences of what had happened, counsel and
befriend her — when suddenly her heart missed a beat. On the
wall beyond the open door a shadow had stirred ; Jacques had
come too, he was about to enter ! The fingers resting on Jenny’s
bowed neck grew tense. Some moments passed, while Mme. de
Fontanin gazed fixedly at the doorway. The harsh, astringent
odour of Jenny’s crape veil hovered in the air. At last Jacques’
form showed on the threshold, and once again a picture of the
two young faces side by side, lost in a dream of remembered
pleasure, rose before her eyes.
‘My dears ! My poor children !’ She could hardly bring out
the words; her voice was tremulous with consternation — and
reproach.
Jacques had crossed the threshold and stood facing her with
a look of mingled shyness and bravado. Then in a clear voice
she said :
‘Good morning, Jacques.’
Jenny looked up quickly, her face contorted in a strange
grimace, that, though there was no laughter in it, seemed the
691
SUMMER, 1914
expression of a diabolical glee; a hard light, that brought to
mind a lower instinct shamelessly laid bare, shone in the blue
depths of her eyes. She stretched her arm towards Jacques,
caught his wrist, dragged him towards her; then, turning to
her mother, said in a voice that tried to be affectionate but had
a ring of triumph, with overtones of challenge, almost of
truculence :
‘He’s come back to me, mamma. And for ever !’
For a moment Mme. de Fontanin gazed at each in turn. She
did her best to smile, but could not ; a faint sigh escaped her lips.
Jenny was watching her mother’s face. It was quivering a
little, with consternation, but with tenderness as well; in its
expression, as in the little sigh, Jenny might have found a
presage of consent, but that her morbid aptitude to take offence
read into it only regret and disapproval. Mortified, her filial love
cut to the quick, she drew away from her mother and sprang
to her feet with a quick movement that brought her standing to
Jacques’ side. Her defiant attitude, the glitter of her eyes, told
of inordinate pride up in arms and ready to take the offensive.
Jacques, on the contrary, gazed at Mme. de Fontanin with a
look of calm, affectionate instancy and, had he spoken, it would
have been to say, ‘I understand your feelings. But you, too,
should try to understand ours.’
Mme. de Fontanin cast a quick, shy glance at the two young
people, then dropped her eyes ; that hateful picture of the scene
in the bedroom had risen again before her.
There was a long silence. Then, by force of habit, she said,
with a courteous wave of her hand to Jacques :
‘Don’t remain standing, my dears. Do sit down.’
Jacques drew up a chair for Jenny; then, at a sign from
Mme. de Fontanin sat down on her left.
The few simple words seemed to have cleared the atmosphere.
Now that all three were seated in a circle, as at a friendly call,
the tension in the air seem to relax. Jacques found he was able
to ask Mme. de Fontanin about her journey back to France, in
an almost natural voice.
‘Didn’t you get my last letter?’ Mme. de Fontanin asked
Jenny.
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
‘No. I haven’t had a single letter from you. Not a line. Only
this postcard. The first. Written at the station in Vienna, on
Monday.’ She spoke in rapid jerks, through half-closed lips.
‘On Monday?’ Mmc. de Fontanin repeated vaguely. The
effort of tiying to work out the sequence of the days spent in
Vienna set her eyelids fluttering. ‘But I posted two letters every
night, one for you and one for Daniel.’
Once again the thought of her son made her heart miss a beat.
‘I didn’t get any letters,’ Jenny said harshly.
‘What about Daniel? Have you heard from him?’
‘Yes. Once.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He said he was leaving Luneville. Since then I’ve had no
news from him.’
Again there came a silence which Jacques, feeling embar-
rassed, was the first to break.
‘And — when did you leave Vienna, Madame de Fontanin?’
She had some trouble in remembering, then said :
‘On Thursday. Yes, Thursday morning. But we didn’t reach
Udine till late that night, and only started off again next day
at noon.’
‘Had they news in Austria as soon as Thursday morning of
the bombardment of Belgrade?’
Mme. de Fontanin gazed at him in perplexity before con-
fessing: ‘I’ve no idea.’ During her stay in Vienna she had
devoted all her mind to the task of clearing her husband’s good
name, and had paid little heed to what was happening in the
world.
A new thought waylaid her. Why, Jenny hasn’t even asked if
I succeeded in my attempt to straighten up our affairs ! And,
looking at her daughter, suddenly she put herself a poignant
question : Isn’t she a wee bit disappointed at my having
managed to get back?
Jacques, in order to say something, went on inquiring about
the mood prevailing in Vienna, about the demonstrations.
Mme. de Fontanin did her best to answer ; she, too, was clinging
desperately to impersonal topics of that order, which postponed
the dreaded explanation for the while. For all three at that
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SUMMER, 1914
moment still believed an ‘explanation’ was impending and
inevitable.
Jacques kept on turning towards Jenny, trying to draw her
into the conversation. But she had ceased even pretending to
listen. The stiff poise of her head, the tense expression of the
gaunt young face, the harsh aloofness of her gaze, the curious
way she had that morning of pursing her lips and holding her
chin up — all implied not only a desire to stand apart, but a
rankling constraint, an estrangement amounting to hostility.
Planted on a chair the back of which was too low to give her
any support, her nerves frayed to breaking-point, her body
tingling with fatigue, she let her gaze stray casually round the
room, sometimes lingering on her mother as on an actress
playing a minor part in a stage-setting unsubstantial as a dream.
It seemed to her as if Mme. de Fontanin had been sitting thus,
with her Bible on her lap, in that old armchair upholstered in
green velvet and placed eternally at the same angle to catch
the light from the window, from the beginning of time; a
symbolic figure of the past — pathetic may be, but, above all,
exasperating — that bygone past which gradually, minute by
minute, was slipping away from her, fading into the distance,
as a group of friends standing on the quay fades from the
traveller’s view as his ship puts out to sea. Already, she was
under way towards far other shores, and in her heart the strong
rhythms of the new life beginning for her throbbed like the
pulsing of the engines driving the ship ahead. If at that moment
Jacques had taken her arm saying, ‘Come, leave all this behind
for ever,’ she would have followed him without one backward
glance.
In the silence the little clock standing beside Daniel’s photo-
graph on the bedside table, chimed lengthily.
Jacques glanced at it and, seized by a sudden longing to
escape, turned to Jenny.
‘Why, it’s eleven ! I niust be off.’
They exchanged a hasty glance ; Jeimy assented with a nod,
and was the first to move.
Watching them, Mme. de Fontanin had a particularly painful
impression : her Jenny, once so frank and loyal, had changed
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
out of recognition. She had acquired an evasive manner, a
‘guilty conscience’ demeanour. Yes, for all their pose of assur-
ance, they struck her — both alike — just then as hypocritical,
insincere. She saw them eyeing each other with a smug, slightly
ridiculous air of superiority, like two augurs solely in the secrets
of the gods. And she could not help adding to herself, ‘like two
accomplices.’ Such indeed was the case; between them was the
intoxicating complicity of their love, which they wished to see
as something apart and absolute, unfathomable and unique — ■
unique above all ; a love so exceptional that no one but them-
selves could penetrate its mysteries.
Emboldened by Jenny’s approval, Jacques went up to Mme.
de Fontanin to say good-bye.
She was flustered by this abrupt leave-taking. Were they
really going to leave her thus, with all that mattered left unsaid?
How unfair that they should trust her so little ! She did her best
to think herself into acceptance of this, too — the heartlessness
of their behaviour. Perhaps it was she who should have made
the first move, prompted them to confide in her. Well, now it
was too late. She had not the energy left to make that move.
What was more, she felt that, what with physical exhaustion
and the emotional shock she had received, her nerves might
get the better of her any moment, she might easily give
way to an impulse of ill-humour or injustice. It was best,
perhaps, that this first interview should pass off without an
explanation.
Still, she found it hard to forgive Jenny, though for the while
it was less the moral lapse that weighed with her than Jenny’s
rebellious attitude, as unaccountable as it was unwarranted.
Towards Jacques she felt no resentment; on the contrary, she
had been favourably impressed by him throughout their conver-
sation; she had glimpsed behind his shyly deferent manner an
unspoken comprehension, and had realized that his conscience
anyhow was crystal-clear, that there was nothing mean or
ignoble in his personality. Moreover, he was Daniel’s friend and
she was ready, if it was God’s will, to love him as a son.
So little hostile did she feel towards him that, at the moment
of shaking hands, she was on the point of drawing him to her
695
SUMMER, 1914
as she would have done with Daniel, and saying : ‘No, my dear,
don’t be so formal ! Let me kiss you.’ Unhappily, just then she
looked up and saw Jenny’s eyes intent on her, shrewd, ruthless,
charged with smouldering animosity, and read their silent
message. ‘Yes, I’m watching, I know what’s in your mind, and
I’m waiting to see if you’ll make the motherly gesture I’ve
been expecting from you ever since I brought Jacques into this
room.’ And then Mme. de Fontanin’s rankling irritation got
the better of her, all her pride was up in arms. No ; she would
not let herself be browbeaten by her daughter into doing what
she was prepared to do spontaneously !
So she merely held out her hand to Jacques, and he alone
perceived in the pressure of the trembling fingers all the
emotion, the secret acquiescence and affection that went into
that commonplace leave-taking.
It was all over in a moment. But, as Jacques moved away,
accompanied by Jenny, Mme. de Fontanin had a harrowing
intuition that, in that fateful moment, all the happiness of her
future relations with Jenny had been at stake, and that the bond
between her and her daughter had been flawed beyond redress.
A sudden panic came over her.
‘What, Jenny . . . are you going out, too?’
‘No,’ the girl answered curtly, without looking round.
In the passage Jenny clutched Jacques’ arm and, without
speaking, hurried him into the hall. There they gazed at each
other, each reading in the other’s eyes a like perplexity.
‘You’ll come away with me, all the same?’ Jacques asked in
a low voice.
Jenny gave a start.
‘Of course !’ She sounded as indignant as if he had questioned
her love.
‘How . . . how are you going to tell her?’ he said after a
short pause.
She was standing facing him, one arm raised, grasping a jamb
of the old oak cupboard.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed with a quick toss of her head, ‘nothing
matters to me now !’
He looked at her in surprise. His eyes roved to the little hand,
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
white against the dark brown wood, the faintly quivering
fingers. He pressed his lips to them.
Suddenly she asked :
‘Would you take her with us?’
‘Whom? Your mother?’ He hesitated for the fraction of a
second. ‘Yes, if you think. . . . Certainly. But why do you ask?
Do you think she’ll want to come with us?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied hastily. ‘No, I don’t expect so. I
only wanted to know, in case. . . .’ She fell silent, a faint smile
on her lips. Then, ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Where shall I meet
you?’
‘Don’t you want me to come and call for you here?’
‘No.’
‘What about your luggage?’
‘It’ll be quite light.’
‘Will you be able to carry it by yourself to the tram?’
‘Yes.’
‘And my papers? The parcel I left in your room the other
day?’
‘I’ll pack it with my things.’
‘Right. Then we’ll meet at the Gare de Lyon. What time?’
She pondered.
‘At two. Half-past two at the latest.’
‘I’ll wait for you in the refreshment-room, will that do? We
can leave your valise there till the train starts.’
She went up to him, took his face between her hands. ‘My
beloved !’ she murmured to herself and slowly let her ardent
gaze sink into Jacques’ eyes, till their lips met and clung
together.
She was the first to loosen their embrace.
‘Go now.’ Her voice no less than her face betrayed the tension
of her nerves and her utter exhaustion. ‘Now I’m going back to
mamma. I shall have a talk with her, and tell her everything.’
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SUMMER, 1914
52
Sunday^ August 2
AN ANGRY SCENE BETWEEN JENNY AND HER MOTHER
No sooner had the door of the flat closed behind him than
Jacques felt the nervous unrest which had given him, on leaving
the Etendard office, so keen a desire to be alone, seething up once
more. For a moment he asked himself what was this desperately
urgent thing he had to do? Then Mourlan’s words came back
to him. ‘Suppose suddenly, like a lightning-flash, there fell
between the two armies a single ray of truth. . .
It came with the blinding light of a revelation. ‘Between the
two armies.’ So violent was the impact of the words, so vivid
and precise their meaning, that he stopped short half way down
the stairs, dazed and dumbfounded, his pulses racing with
new-found hope and purpose. The plan which, for several
hours, had been germinating in the depths of his unconscious
mind, had risen matured to full awareness, and dominated his
whole being. It was no vague aspiration, no utopian dream;
what had so swiftly taken form within him was a quite definite
programme, feasible single-handed, one of those fixed ideas
that strike root in the secrecy of anarchist brains. Now he knew
why he was going to Switzerland and what task lay before him
there. He knew the decisive act he was to carry out unaided,
an act which after these long days of aimless drifting, sterile
agitation, would enable him to battle for his faith, declare
war on war. An act which would involve undoubtedly the
sacrifice of his life. That he had realized from the start, and
accepted without indulging in ‘heroics,’ without even taking
stock of his courage. His sole motive was a mystic faith that
this plan of his, for which he was ready to give up his life, was
now the one and only way of rousing the masses from their
torpor, of changing abruptly the course of events and counter-
ing the forces that had combined against the toilers of the earth,
against fraternity and j'ustice.
698
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
He had completely forgotten Mme. de Fontanin’s return, their
strange encounter of a moment ago ; he had forgotten even
Jenny.
It was not so with her. Before going back to her mother’s
room, she had slipped out on to the balcony to watch Jacques
leaving the house, and already she was growing anxious at not
seeing him appear. At last she saw him fling out of the portico
and, paying no heed to the people on the pavement or the busy
traffic, dash like a madman across the street in the direction of
the Boulevard Saint-Michel. She kept her eyes fixed on him
till he was out of sight. But he did not once look back. . . .
Mme. de Fontanin, after Jenny left her, had let her head sink
back, and stayed thus for some minutes, stunned and motion-
less. She could not set her thoughts in order, but one vague,
despairing phrase, an echo of her dark forebodings, kept ring-
ing in her brain: ‘No good can come of it.’ Before her eyes
still hovered the forms of Jacques and Jenny, standing side by
side, like twin stems- springing from the same root, and by an
involuntary association of ideas another picture rose before her :
her father’s dingy parlour and, standing by the window, Jerome,
her young fiance, in a light-grey, black-braided morning coat
that showed his willowy figure to the best advantage, smiling
towards her, with a look of gay, triumphant unconcern. How
confidently that day they, too, had faced the years to come !
How valiant had been their stand against the family and, with
him beside her, how little there had seemed to fear ! And in a
flash all her illusions, the glamour of those golden days, came
back to her ; the certainty of happiness in store, the conviction
that they were the first to know a love so rapturous. Far from
deriving from this evocation of the past an aftertaste of bitter-
ness or even sadness, she felt gloriously exhilarated — as though
life had indeed fulfilled those promises of bliss !
She gave a slight start when she heard Jenny coming back.
Her daughter’s resolute tread, the way she closed the door, the
strained look on her face and the unseeing, fanatic eyes seared
and burning still with sombre fires, alarmed her.
Love and love alone, she thought, has power to charm away
that dark obsession ; she murmured nervously :
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SUMMER, 1914
‘Come, Jenny darling, come and kiss me.’
Jenny flushed a little; on her lips was still a lingering savour
of Jacques’ kiss. She made as if, busy taking off her hat and veil
and laying them on the bed, she had failed to catch her mother’s
remark. Then, overcome by fatigue, she walked across the room
to the couch and stretched herself on it.
From where she lay, forcing her voice a little and with rather
clumsy eagerness, she cried to her mother :
‘Oh mamma, you can’t imagine how happy I am !’
Mme. de Fontanin turned quickly towards her daughter.
There had been a note of challenge in Jenny’s cry, but her
mother’s ear had seemed to detect as well an undertone of
sadness. That was enough to convince her that she had a
bounden duty to fulfil, whatever were the risks in doing so.
Obeying an impulse which she believed came from above, she
drew herself up and said almost imperiously :
‘Tell me, Jenny. Have you prayed? Really and truly prayed?
And can you say: “The Lord is on my side”? ’
Her mother’s words stung Jenny to revolt. The religious issue
lay like a gulf between her mother and herself; a gulf whose
depth she alone had plumbed.
Mme. de Fontanin went on speaking.
‘Jenny, my child. Cast off your pride. Let’s pray together,
you and I, and seek help from Him to whom all things are
known. Look, with His aid, into the dark places of your soul.
Tell me, Jenny. Don’t you feel something within you that — that
protests?’ Her voice shook. ‘A warning voice that tells you —
that perhaps you’re making a mistake, perhaps you’re lying to
yourself?’
Jenny’s silence gave her mother the impression that she was
communing with herself, about to pray for guidance. But, after
a while, the girl said with a sigh :
‘No, you can’t understand.’ Her voice was harsh, discouraged,
hostile.
‘No, darling — I do understand. I assure you !’
‘No, you don’t.’ Jenny’s sullen eyes glowed with obstinate
irritation; she w,as finding a morbid pleasure in picturing
herself as misunderstood, a victim of injustice. It was on the
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
tip of her tongue to say : ‘You’ve no idea of what a love like
ours can mean.’ But she could not bring herself to utter the
word ‘love’ aloud. A tight smile pursed her lips. ‘I saw quite
well just now,’ she said, ‘that you didn’t understand — not one
little bit !’
‘What ever do you mean, Jenny? Do you mean I didn’t
behave nicely to you and him just now?’
‘I do.’
‘But why . . . ?’
‘You weren’t nice at all.’ Jenny gazed up at the ceiling ; then
sitting up on the couch, she went on in a morose, aggrieved
voice. ‘If you’d understood us, you’d have found something to
say to us, something to show you shared our happiness.’
Mme. de Fontanin had averted her eyes. After a pause she said :
‘You’re unjust, Jenny. How can you reproach me with that?
When I came here this morning I hadn’t an idea. . . . You’d
kept me in the dark, you’d never told me anything.’
Jenny cut her short with a shrug of her shoulders, a gesture
that did not come natural to her and which her mother did not
remember having seen her make before (she had picked it up
from Jacques). With an obdurate, enigmatic, self-complacent
look she said :
‘I didn’t keep you in the dark. There you are again — you’re
accusing me without knowing the truth! A fortnight ago I
myself hadn’t the least idea of it.’
‘But it’s not a fortnight since I left you ; it’s just a week to-day.
When I went away you — you “hadn’t an idea of it”?’
‘No.’
This was untrue ; her mother was still in Paris on the evening
she had met Jacques at the Gare du Nord. Her head thrown
back, she kept her face out of view, but her voice had betrayed
her so flagrantly that both women blushed.
‘Why, a fortnight ago,’ Jenny went on, accompanying the
words with a brief, constrained laugh to cover her confusion,
‘if you’d mentioned Jacques to me. I’d have told you that I
loathed him, and would never consent to meet him again.’
Resting her hands on the arms of her chair, Mme. de
Fontanin bent forward impulsively.
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SUMMER, 1914
‘Then it all happened in a few days — before you’d had time
to think.’ She all but said ‘and talk it over with me,’ but merely
added : . and ask Daniel’s advice.’
‘Daniel’s advice?’ Jenny echoed in feigned surprise. ‘Why
ever should I do that?’ Driven on by a sense of growing
exasperation, that she would have been hard put to justify —
the climax perhaps, though she did not suspect it, of years of
affectionate restriction, petty vexations silently endured — she
gave again that brief, disdainful laugh. Then yielding to an
unaccountable impulse to wound her mother at the most
vulnerable point, she said: ‘As if Daniel could know, could
understand! What would Daniel have said to me? The stupid
things that everyone says in such cases ! What they call “talking
sense” ! ’
‘Oh Jenny!’ Mme. de Fontanin implored.
But now there was no holding Jenny.
‘The things that, I expect, you too are thinking. Why not
come out with them? Why not tell me there’s a war on? Or
that Jacques and I hardly know each other? Or that I won’t
be happy?’
‘Jenny!’
Mme. de Fontanin gazed at her daughter in stupefaction.
The girl before her, with the frowning brows, set features and
shrewish voice, had not the least resemblance with the Jenny
who had never left her side during the past twenty years. This
new Jenny was the prey, she saw, of instincts that had suddenly
broken loose during these last few days. ‘She’s irresponsible,’
the mother thought with a feeling of despair, but at the same
time of indulgence, almost of relief.
Her mother’s disapproval, even her obvious distress, far from
softening Jenny, goaded her on.
‘And supposing I tell you I don’t care, I don’t mind being
unhappy with himl That’s no concern of Daniel’s. That’s my
affair and mine alone. I don’t care what other people think.
Now that I have him, why should I go for advice to anybody,
anybody in the world?’
The blood left Mme. de Fontanin’s cheeks as this new blow
struck home. What hurt most was her realization that Jenny
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
had deliberately set out to hurt her. The Spirit of Evil, the
Powers of Darkness, had taken up their abode in her daughter’s
heart. She launched a trembling appeal to God. The atmosphere
of the room seemed tainted, her power of resisting its morbid
contagion was weakening, anger breaking through her self-
control. Still, she managed to keep to a tone of quiet firmness
for a few moments more.
‘You’ve always had your entire liberty of conscience, Jenny.
You know it quite well; ever since you’ve been old enough to
hear the voice of your own conscience, I’ve never imposed my
will on you, never tried to force my ideas on you. And to-day,
too, I assure you, you’re perfectly free to act as you choose,
without taking my advice. But I feel it is my duty . . .’
‘Really, mamma!’
‘Yes, it’s my duty to speak to you, to warn you against your-
self — even if nothing comes of it. Jenny I Jenny, my dear child,
do let me appeal to the better side of your nature. Can you
have lost all notion of good and evil? Only open your eyes, try
to see things clearly, you’ve been led astray by an infatuation
I’d never have dreamed possible. And you’ve come to a point
where you give way blindly to your passion, not only without
the least remorse, but as if you were doing something courageous
something to admire !’ Her breath was coming in quick gasps.
She had a galling impression that she was too worn out to cope
with the situation, that she had taken a wrong line and was not
saying the words that ought to be said, or in the proper tone.
And perhaps she would have desisted had not the sight of
Jenny lying on the couch called up in a hateful spasm of remem-
brance the picture of two young bodies locked in an embrace
on Daniel’s sofa.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ she blurted out.
‘Really, mamma !’ Jenny said again, with an ominous calmness.
‘Yes, heartily ashamed of yourself!’ Mme. de Fontanin cried
again, throwing prudence to the winds. ‘I’d never have believed
it of you — of my little Jenny. That you should take advantage
of my being away to — to yield to all sorts of wicked impulses !’
She pulled herself up, feeling that indignation was giving a
wrong direction to her words, and swerved off on a new line
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SUMMER, 1914
of argument. ‘Are a few days enough for making a decision
that’s so terribly important, that will shape the whole course
of a life? And not your life only, ours as well. Your brother’s
life and mine. For, don’t you realize, it’s our whole future, the
future of all three of us that’s at stake? Did you stop to think
of that? No, you — you simply . . .’
‘Stop, mamma! For pity’s sake, stop!’
‘You lost your head. You behaved like a silly child!’ Mme.
de Fontanin cried in a last, despairing outburst. And the words
that had been running in her head all the time rose to her lips.
‘Nothing good can come of it.’
Jenny felt a cold fury surge up within her like a great wave,
lifting her on to her feet. To-day she seemed to read her mother
like an open book, and find there nothing but selfishness,
aridity, incomprehension.
‘Let me tell you something !’ she said, walking up to Mme. de
Fontanin. ‘If there’s one of us two doesn’t see clearly into her
own heart, it’s you. Yes, you’re thinking all the time of your
own future, not of mine. I’ve just made a discovery: that it’s
for yourself you’ve always loved me, only for yourself. It’s
jealousy that’s setting you against us now. Ybu’re jealous, and
you’ve only one idea in your head — to try to keep me with you,
out of pure selfishness. Well, you’d better not count on doing
that. Too late ! I’m sorry to have to cause you this distress, but
the sooner you know the better: Jacques is leaving for Switzer-
land to-night. And I am going with him.’
‘What? To-night? To Switzerland?’ Mme. de Fontanin’s
voice was barely audible.
‘It’s not a sudden fancy ; we fixed it all up before your return.
It’s the last train that Jacques . . .’
‘To-night, did you say?’
‘Yes, I’ll be starting quite soon.’
‘No, Jenny, you mustn’t do that. Really you mustn’t.’
‘Nothing you can say, mamma, will make the slightest
difference.’ There was a vicious edge to her voice. ‘No one now
can make us change our minds.’
‘I forbid you to go, do you hear?’
Jenny’s only reply was a scornful lift of\her shoulders.
704
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
‘Do you hear what I say, Jenny? I forbid you to go.’
‘It’s no use talking like that, mother. My mind’s made up.
In any case, instead of disapproving of me, if you weren’t so
utterly heartless . . .’ She left the phrase unfinished.
‘Utterly heartless !’ Mme. de Fontanin repeated weakly. This
cruellest cut of all made her forget all the rest.
‘Yes,’ cried Jenny, losing all self-control. ‘Yes, if you really
cared about my happiness, if you loved me for myself, to-day
you’d . . .’
But Mme. de Fontanin could bear no more. Clasping her
forehead with both hands, she stopped her ears with her
fingers so as to hear no longer that angry voice shrilling in
her weary brain. ‘Man proposes,’ she thought, closing her eyes,
‘but God disposes. Thy will be done.’
A sudden noise made her look up with a start. Jenny had left
the room, slamming the door. Her hat and veil were no longer
on the bed.
‘I must pray,’ Mme. de Fontanin thought, still haunted by
the picture of Jenny as she had seen her a moment since, half
mad with rage, brazenly defiant.
‘Oh Heavenly Father,’ she entreated, ‘help me, give me
strength. Nothing is ever past redress. We must never despair
of any of thy creatures.’ And slowly, twice in succession, she
repeated the Holy Words. ‘ “Look not at the things which are
seen but at the things which are not seen. For the things seen
are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” ’
A dark cloud settled on her mind, but only for a minute ;
unexpectedly the shadows lifted and thought began to march
again. She remained seated in the easy chair, her shoulders
drooping, her hands clasped, unmoving. But her brain was
working with extreme lucidity. She was searching her con-
science indefatigably, and, as always in the hour of trial, trying
her utmost to analyse her grief and circumscribe its limits, so
as to make of it a precise, clean-cut entity, as it were, which
could be set apart and committed to the God of infinite com-
passion.
For her, the worst shock had not been Jenny’s hasty decision
to go abroad ; indeed she could not quite bring herself to believe
705 AA
SUMMER, 1914
it would materialize. What, rightly or wrongly, grieved her
more than all the rest was the discovery of Jenny’s double-
dealing. That was the deepest, cruellest wound of all. Guilelessly
she had believed that her affectionate comprehension, the
freedom she had allowed Jenny even as a mere child, had
created such an atmosphere of mutual trust between her and
her daughter that Jenny would never dream of coming to any
grave decision without letting her know beforehand and seeking
her approval. And now, at the most critical moment of her life,
Jenny had kept her in the dark. Taking advantage of her
absence, she had behaved in the underhand way one would
expect of a girl who had been brought up in conditions of strict
dependence and, roused to revolt, had broken loose at last
from a state of irksome, unjustifiable subjection. Needless to say,
despite the heated words that had passed between them, Mme.
de Fontanin felt no more doubts about her daughter’s love than
she did about her own love for Jenny. It was her trust that
had been profoundly lacerated. A trust like that which she had
placed in Jenny, once it has been betrayed so flagrantly, is
maimed beyond redress. She might love her daughter as much
as ever, but never again could she trust her 'as in the past.
The thought of it reduced her to despair. Again she opened
her Bible at random. Without much trouble she fixed her
attention on the words, and felt her peace of mind slowly
returning to her. A peace so strange and unexpected as to be
almost ominous. And suddenly, looking into herself more
closely, she seemed to discern its latent cause, and her heart
sank again. A moment ago there had risen, unsummoned,
within her a feeling that was steadily, insidiously gaining
ground ; a state of mind that she knew only too well, for it had
come over her before, during the tragic period of her life when
the prospect of further years of futile suffering had seemed too
odious to be borne and she had resolved to part from Jerome.
Less a mood, perhaps, than an instinctive reaction, like the
defensive reflex of a threatened organism. ‘It’s an antidote,’
she used to say, ‘that nature in her wisdom creates within us
to make certain pains endurable.’ Putting down the Book, she
tried to analyse and give a name to the sensation she was
706
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
experiencing. Resignation, perhaps ; or detachment — but most
likely there was no one word describing the blend of two so
contradictory feelings : affection and indifference. Indifference !
The crudeness of the term revolted her. The thought that a
mother’s love like that which for so many years had glowed
within her heart — that such a love may, under the stress of
circumstance, grow tainted with indifference (though, for the
moment, such a thought might bring a certain comfort) —
filled her with dismay for the future. Closing her eyes, she
banished from her thoughts the after years. And once again
murmured : ‘Thy will be done.’
But then a flood of grief swept over her again ; burying her
face in her hands, she wept.
53
Sunday, August 2
THE LAST MEETING OF JACQUES AND JENNY
Jenny was fiercely determined to go, and instinct warned
her that, if she was to carry out without faltering this act in
which her whole future was at stake, on no account must she
see her mother again. Nor even allow a breathing-space for
thought.
She had run to her bedroom, had feverishly bundled into a
small vaHse the few black dresses she possessed, and then, with
set lips and flaming cheeks had rapidly put on her hat and veil,
and, without even a glance at the mirror, had dashed out of
the flat like a hunted creature.
‘I’m alone now, and I’m free,’ she told herself with a sort
of rapture, mingled with alarm, as she sped down the stairs.
‘Now it’s absolutely true. I’ve no one in the world but him'
707
SUMMER, 1914
In the street she felt momentarily at a loss. Where was she
to go? Jacques was not due to meet her at the buffet until two,
and it was only just after twelve. That couldn’t be helped, she
reflected ; she had her valise with her, the best thing was to go
straight to the Gare de Lyon and wait.
She was in luck’s way. Almost immediately a tram came up
which would take her to the Boulevard St. Germain, where she
could change into a line going to the station. She secured a
place on the back platform.
T mustn’t let myself think,’ she kept on repeating to herself.
This was the easier to do as all the people in the tram were
loudly chattering to each other — as people do after an accident,
‘And the number of marriages, you’d never believe it! Yes,
ma’am, the staffs in the registry-offices are being fairly worked
off their feet what with so many lads that have been called up
wanting to get spliced before they go.’ ‘But what about the
formalities?’ ‘Oh, they’ve been simplified. A good job too. Red
tape’s de trap, as they say, when there’s a war on. All you’ve
got to do is to hand in two copies of your birth-certificate and
your military service-book and you can make an honest woman
of your girl in less than no time.’ ‘Well now,T’m very glad to
hear that. It shows the boys who’re going to the front want to
do the right thing.’ ‘Do the right thing? You can trust ’em to
do that, ma’am, and at the front as well. No one can say a
Frenchman doesn’t rise to the occasion when his country needs
him.’ ‘There’s a recruiting office next door to my house. Well,
from the moment it was daylight, all the morning, it’s been
fairly mobbed by fellows wanting to enlist. They’re signing on
by thousands.’ ‘No,’ a Medical Officer in uniform corrected
him. ‘Nobody’s being allowed to sign on for the present. Those
fellows went there to get information, or perhaps to have their
names put on the list.’
The Bastille tram into which Jenny had to change was no
less crowded; people were standing wedged together in the
gangways. However, thanks to the kind offices of a middle-
aged woman who, seeing Jenny laden with a valise, told her
daughter to give up her seat to the young lady, she was able
to sit down.
708
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
The rumble of the tramwheels and the hum of voices had a
calming effect on Jenny but, to escape from her own thoughts,
she made a point of listening to the remarks being exchanged
over her head.
At the Rue Saint-Jacques the tram stopped to let a company
of light artillery go by, in the direction of the Sorbonne.
‘All the garrison has marched out of Paris already, so they
say, though nobody saw them go.’ ‘Yes, one feels there’s a firm
hand behind it all. Everything’s running like clockwork. Those
soldiers know their job, eh?’ ‘Sure ! By the way it’s starting, you
can see they mean to make things hum !’ ‘I was holiday-making
in the Vosges, at Ribeauvilliers. Well, let me tell you, when
one’s seen those fine lads serving on the frontier, the light
infantry regiments especially — well, one doesn’t worry.’ ‘Still,
you can’t deny that was a rotten thing to do, retiring ten kilo-
metres from the frontier.’ ‘That’s no matter. When the Bodies
find they’ve twenty million Russian bayonets prodding them
behind, and us in front . . .’ ‘The proprietor of my hotel told
me a chap who’d just come from Luxemburg had seen a French
airman dive head-foremost on a Zeppelin, and burst it like
a soap-bubble.’ ‘Got to watch out for false news,’ the tram
conductor observed. ‘Just now a passenger told me we’d had
a decisive victory last night, in Alsace.’ ‘Well yes, that’s going
a bit too far. But I’ve been told that Boche patrols have been
seen round Nancy.’ ‘Nancy! Tell us another!’ ‘Any of you
chaps hear they’ve blown up the bridges at Soissons?’ ‘Who’s
blown ’em up? Our folk or themV ‘Our folk, what do you think?’
‘Might have been a spy, though.’ ‘Yes, the whole place is fairly
crawling with spies, so I’ve been told. The police can’t cope
with ’em. It’s up to each of us to keep an eye on the folk about
him.’ ‘My brother has a job at the Gare d’Orleans. Well, his
wife told us she saw the man who lives in the room opposite
hers hiding a German flag under his bed.’ ‘Personally,’ a
bespectacled gentleman announced sententiously, ‘I don’t
deny that a German has the right to shout “God save Germany”
if he wants — provided he doesn’t do it in a provocative way.
After all, they were born over there ; it’s not their fault.’
There was another stop at the Place Maubert. The road was
709
a u MMiiiit, 1 y 1 /j.
blocked by a huge crowd, and Jenny saw a band of young men
carrying a long beam, battering in a window bearing the
shopsign ‘Maggi’s Milk.’
The passengers in the tram were thrilled.
‘That’s the stuff!’ someone cried. ‘Maggi,’ the gentleman with
the glasses explained, ‘is a Hun. In fact he’s a cavalry colonel
in the German army. The Action Fran guise showed him up some
time ago. He’s been biding his time till mobilization came, to
do us a bad turn.’ ‘Yes, I hear he poisoned over a hundred kids
this morning, in the Bellville district, with his milk.’
Jenny heard the dull thuds of the battering-ram pounding
on the iron shutters. At last they caved in with a tinkle of
broken glass as the windows shivered into pieces. The crowd
surrounding the shop broke into cheers and cries : ‘Down with
Germany 1 Lynch the traitors !’ At a corner of the square a squad
of cyclist police had dismounted and were watching the scene,
without interfering. After all, France had been attacked; the
people were dispensing rough-and-ready justice — why prevent
them?
At last the tram came to the Gare de Lyon.
The station entrances were thronged. Carrying her valise,
Jenny threaded her way across the crowd to the refreshment-
room.
The windows stood wide open and the room was flooded with
garish light. Huddled up in a corner, her moist hands clasped,
she kept her eyes fixed on the door, though it was far too early
to hope for Jacques’ arrival. The room was stiflingly hot.
After the jolts of the tram, the hard, narrow wall-sofa on which
she was sitting made her painfully conscious of her aching
limbs. Her eyes were smarting with the glare. People were
running in and out all the time; others hurrying past the
window, their luggage piled on porters’ trollies which they
themselves were pushing. She stopped watching the door for
a moment, lifted her valise off the seat beside her and stowed
it under the table; a second later, she dragged it out, put it
beside her again, then resumed her watch over the people
coming in — inconsequent behaviour which betrayed the state
of her nerves. In the crowded tramcar she had managed to
710
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
keep her mind in a sort of coma ; now, left to her own resources,
she was at the mercy of the emotions running riot in her heart,
and the prospect of having to stay thus by herself, for a full
hour quite likely, seemed past enduring. She did her utmost to
keep her mind busy with trifles, conjuring up a host of harmless
little thoughts, but always she felt hovering round her brain
like a bird of prey wheeling in ever narrower circles, the night-
mare idea that till now she had managed to keep at a distance.
To fend it off she fell to examining the objects on the table,
counting the rolls in the bread-basket, the lumps of sugar in a
saucer. Then she looked up at the door again and watched the
people moving in and out. A woman with greying hair came
in, noticed an empty table near the door and sat down at it,
burying her face in her hands. And in a flash the idea that
Jenny had been warding off swooped down on her, struck
home. Before her eyes rose a picture of her mother as she had
left her, bowed and broken, her hands clasping her forehead.
What was she doing now? Perhaps she had decided to have
lunch. With her mind’s eye Jenny saw her in the kitchen
discovering the table laid for two, the dirty plates. And now it
was she who closed her eyes and, bending forward, pressed her
hands to her aching brows.
Some minutes passed before she made a movement. Words
she herself had said were echoing in her brain. ‘You’re jealous
. . . utterly heartless.’ It passed her understanding how she had
ever come to say such things, and how, after saying them, she
had brought herself to go.
When at last she raised her head her expression was calm,
determined ; the pressure of her fingers had left marks on her
cheeks. ‘What’s the use of thinking about it?’ she murmured
to herself ‘My duty’s plain ; there’s only one thing to do.’ For
a moment yet she remained staring with unseeing eyes in front
of her, crushed by the weight of her resolve. On only one point
was she still uncertain how to act; should she wait for Jacques
to come before she took the momentous step, obeyed the call
of duty? But why should she do that? To ask his advice? Had
she a furtive hope he would attempt to dissuade her? No, her
decision was irrevocable. And, that being so, no time must
ill
SUMMER, 1914
be wasted, she must not keep her mother in suspense a moment
longer.
She called a waiter.
‘Where can one post an express letter?’
‘The post-office is just over there, miss, by that blue lamp-
post. It’s Sunday, but I expect they’ve stayed open — on a day
like this !’
‘Look after my luggage, please. I’ll be back in a moment.’
She ran out of the refreshment-room.
The waiter had judged correctly, the post-office was open ;
civilians and men in uniform swarmed at the counters. She
bought an express-letter form and wrote :
Mother darling, I must have been mad. I’ll never
forgive myself for the pain I’ve caused you. I implore you
to understand, and to forget. I will stay with you. I’ve
given up my idea of going to Switzerland with Jacques.
I don’t want to leave you by yourself. He is bound to go.
it’s the last day he has for leaving Paris. I will go to join
him later. With you, I hope. Please, please, don’t refuse
to go away with me, so that I can be with him again. I
ought to have hurried back home at once, to kiss you and
tell you all this. But these last few hours before he leaves
— I couldn’t bear not to spend them with him. This even-
ing I’ll be back at home and I’ll explain everything to you,
mother dear, so that you can forgive me.
J-
She thrust the letter into the envelope without reading it
again, with shaking hands. Her whole body was trembling,
clammy with perspiration; her underclothes were sticking to
her skin. Before putting the note into the Express-Letter box
she ascertained that it would be delivered within an hour.
Slowly she walked back to the station, and returned to her seat
in the corner of the refreshment-room.
She asked herself if what she had just done had brought any
appeasement to her mind, but found no answer. Her sacrifice
had left her in the state of utter prostration that follows on a
copious loss of blood. And so despairing was her mood that
now she dreaded Jacques’ coming; with Jacques away she felt
712
SUNDAY, AUGUST 2
surer of being able to keep to her decision. She tried to think
herself into reassurance. ‘In a few days, a week, at most a
fortnight, we’ll be together again.’ But the prospect of a whole
fortnight without him was dreadful as death’s instance.
When at last she saw Jacques entering the refreshment-
room, she stood up and remained thus, pale, stiffly erect, staring
helplessly towards him. No sooner did he catch sight of her than
he realized something serious had befallen.
With a tragic gesture she cut short the question hovering on
his lips.
‘Not here. Let’s go outside.’
Taking her valise, he followed her out.
After a few steps along the pavement, amid the busy throng,
she stopped abruptly, and said in low, hurried tones, raising
on him her haggard eyes :
‘I can’t go away with you to-night.’
Jacques’ lips parted, but he did not speak. He stooped to
set down the valise, and when he looked up again had had time
to steady, almost unknowingly, his expression. His horror-
struck, incredulous look betrayed nothing of the first thought
that had flashed unbidden through his mind. ‘This means I’m
free ... to carry out my task.’
They were being jostled by soldiers and civilians hurrying
to the station; Jacques shepherded Jenny towards a recess
between two pillars.
Then she said :
‘I can’t go away. I can’t leave mamma. Not to-day. If you
knew ! I’ve behaved to her abominably.’
She was staring at the ground, afraid to meet his gaze. He
was bending towards her, as though trying to help her to speak,
his lips quivering, his eyes dark with unspoken thoughts.
‘You understand, don’t you?’ she pleaded. ‘I can’t go now
after what’s happened.’
‘I understand, I understand,’ he muttered between his teeth.
‘I’ve got to stay with her. For a few days anyhow. I’ll come
and join you. Very soon. As soon as I possibly can.’
‘Yes,’ he said vehemently, ‘as soon as you possibly can.’ But
in himself he thought ; ‘No. Never. This is the end.’
713 AA*
Summer, 1914
For some minutes they stood thus, impotent to move or speak
or meet each other’s eyes. She had intended to confess to him
all that had passed between her mother and herself. But it
had somehow gone blurred in her mind, she could not now
recall how one remark had led on to another. Anyhow, what
would have been the good? She felt so hopelessly alone in this
her personal tragedy; it was incommunicable, Jacques had no
place in it, would always remain outside it.
He, too, at this moment felt hopelessly aloof from her. Aloof,
indeed, from everyone; the heroic imaginings with which he
had been drugging himself during the past two hours had
made him impervious to ordinary emotions. Like a watch that
a sudden jolt has stopped, his mind had halted on the first
words Jenny had said, his warrant of release : ‘I can’t go away
with you.’ The grief and disappointment conveyed by his
demeanour were not feigned, but they were on the surface only.
The last impediment had fallen ; he was leaving alone, as a free
man. Everything had become simple.
She gazed at him hungrily, thinking : I shan’t be seeing him
to-morrow, and was struck by the impression of power that
emanated from his face. But in the chaos of her thoughts she
did not perceive the nature of the change that had come
over him, of the new cast that his resolve had already given
his features. Dim with emotion, her eyes lingered fondly on the
strong, sensitive mouth, the stubborn jaw, the shoulders, the
stalwart, resonant chest on which she had pillowed her head a
whole night through. And the thought that she would not
be able to pass the coming night in his arms, held in his warm
embrace, came with a rush of anguish that was sheer physical
pain, pain so intense that, forgetting all, she gave a httle
sobbing cry :
‘Oh, my beloved . . . !’
A sudden gleam that kindled in Jacques’ eyes told her how
rash she had been thus to betray her emotion. And the memories
which that gleam evoked in her gave her a little shiver of dread.
She had yearned to sleep again in his arms — no more than that.
The darkly glowing eyes bored into hers. Through lips that
hardly moved, he murmured :
714
MONDAY, AUGUST 3
‘Before I go away . . . our last afternoon . . . will you, dear?’
She dared not refuse him this last joy. Her cheeks crimson,
she looked away with a wan little smile.
Wandering from her, Jacques’ gaze roamed for some moments
the sunlit square, scanning the high facades on which blazed
gilt inscriptions : Hotel des Vojageurs, Central Palace, Hdtel du
Depart.
Then ‘Come!’ he said, taking her arm.
54
Monday, August j
JACqUEs’ RETURN TO GENEVA
Saffrio glowered at him suspiciously.
‘Who told you?’
‘The concierge at his place in the Rue de Carouge,’ Jacques
replied. ‘I’ve only just come from the train. I haven’t seen
anyone yet.’
‘Si, si. Yes, he’s been staying with me since he came back
from Brussels,’ the Italian admitted. ‘He’s lying low. I could
see he didn’t relish the idea of going back to his old rooms, with
Alfreda gone. So I said, “Come and put up with me, Pilot.”
His room’s upstairs. He lives like he was in jail — lying in bed
all the day long, reading the newspapers. He complains of
rheumatism — but that’s only a pretesto,’ he added with the
ghost of a smile. ‘It’s so as not to go out and have to talk to
people. He won’t see anyone, not even Richardley. And how
he’s changed, you’d never believe it! That bitch, she’s fairly
done him in, blast her! I’d never have thought it possible.’
He threw up his arms despairingly. ‘Yes, the Pilot is a broken
man.’
SUMMER, 1914
Jacques made no reply. Saffrio’s words came to him through
a sort of haze ; he could not manage to shake off a feeling of
still being in the waking dream that had persisted during the
eighteen interminable hours he had spent in the train between
Paris and Geneva. To make things worse, he was suffering
from a gumboil which had several times during these last few
weeks prevented him from sleeping, and which the draughts in
the train had aggravated.
‘Had anything to eat? Want a drink? No? Well, make
yourself a cigarette with this baccy; it’s plenty good, comes
from Aosta.’
‘I want to see him.^
, ‘Wait just a momento. I’ll go upstairs and tell him you’re back.
P’raps he’ll want to see you, p’raps not. You’ve changed, too,
you know.’ His soft, caressing gaze lingered on Jacques. ‘iSz, si.
But you don’t listen to me, you’re “thinking war,” eh? Every-
body’s changed, of course. Tell us what you saw in Paris. So
they let you come here? I’m surprised. The most dreadful
thing, my dear, it’s the way they’ve all gone quite crazy, now
they’re soldiers. Their Juria, their songs! All the trainloads of
men going to the front, their eyes sparkling, afid shouting “T
Berlin!" And on the other side '’’’Nach Paris!" ’
‘Well,’ Jacques said gloomily, ‘the men / saw leaving for the
front weren’t singing.’ Then, as if abruptly wakened from a
trance, he broke out excitedly : ‘What’s so terrible about it all
isn’t that. It’s the International. It’s done nothing, Saffrio;
absolutely nothing! It’s played the traitor. When Jaures died,
they all ratted. All, even the best. Renaudel, Jaures’ bosom
friend. Guesde, Sembat, Vaillant. Yes, even Vaillant, a man
like Vaillant, who had the pluck to declare in Parliament:
“Rather a rebellion than a war!” Even the T.U.C. leaders.
That’s, to my mind, the most baffling thing of all. Yet those
men weren’t tainted with the “Parliamentary spirit,” and the
resolutions passed at all the congresses were perfectly plain :
“A general strike will follow automatically on a declaration
of war.” On the eve of mobilization the proletariat was still
undecided. They could have brought it off. But they didn’t
even try. “Your country needs you.” “We must stand shoulder
716
MONDAY, AUGUST 3
to shoulder.” “We must defend socialism against Prussian mili-
tarism.” That’s the sort of thing they said — they brought them-
selves to say. And when people asked them, “What are we to
do?” all they found to answer was, “Obey your mobilization
orders.” ’
Saffrio’s eyes were full of tears.
‘Even here,’ he said after a short pause, ‘everything’s topsy-
turvy. Nowadays the comrades, they speak in whispers. All
the world’s changed. People are afraid. The Government here
is neutral for to-day; they leave us in peace. But what about
to-morrow? And if we’ve got to leave, where shall we go?
Everybody’s nervous. The police have their eye on everything.
Nobody shows up at Headquarters. Richardley holds meetings
at nights in his room, or at Boissonis’ place. Foreign newspapers
are passed round ; those who understand them translate for the
others. Then off they start discussing, and get all worked up!
Over nothing. What can anyone do? Richardley’s the only one
who goes on working. He has the faith. He says the Inter-
nazionale, it cannot die, it will resurrect itself stronger than ever.
Fie says that Italy ought to speak right now. He wants the Swiss
socialists to combine with the Italian socialists and make a start
at saving the good name of socialism. Because’ — he raised his
hands proudly — ‘in Italy the proletariat, it is faithful. Italy is
the true home of the Revolution. All the group leaders, Mala-
tcsta and Borghi and Mussolini, they are fighting harder than
ever. Not only to prevent the Government from joining in the
war, but to bring peace to the world very soon, by the union of
all the socialists in Europe, the comrades in Germany and Russia. ’
Jacques thought: ‘But they’ve not realized that there are
more rapid ways of bringing peace to the world.’
‘In France, too,’ he said aloud, in a quiet, detached tone, as
though these matters had ceased to concern him, ‘you will find
some isolated groups who’re still holding out. You’d do well to
keep in touch with the Ironworkers’ Union, for instance. There
are individuals as well. You’ve heard of Merrheim, I suppose?
Then there’s Monatte, and the Vie Ouvriere group. None of
them have knuckled under. And you’d find others like them:
Martov, Mourlan and the fellows on UEtendard'
717
SUMMER, 1914
‘In Germany there’s Liebknecht. Richardley’s already got in
contact with him.’
‘And Hosmer, in Vienna. You should be able to arrange
through Mithoerg . . .’
‘Mithoerg!’ the Italian exclain^ed rising to his feet. His lips
were quivering. ‘Haven’t you heard about Mithoerg? He’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘To Austria.’
‘What!’
Saffrio dropped his eyes ; the handsome Roman features wore
a look of naked, uncontrolled, almost animal grief
‘The day when Mithoerg came back from Brussels, he said :
“I’m going back to Austria.” All of us, wc said, “Nonsense,
man, you’re crazy. Why, you already have been sentenced for
a deserter.” But he just says, “That’s why. A deserter, he is
not a coward. A deserter, he comes back when there is a war.
I must go.” Me, I said to him, “To do what, Mithoerg? Not to
join the army, surely?” Then he said, “No, not to join the
army. To be an example. So that they may shoot me dead in
front of everybody.” Si, si, he said that. And that night he left.’
The words ended in a sob.
‘So Mithoerg did that!’ Jacques voice shook, and a faraway
look came into his eyes. For some moments he kept silent; then
he turned to the Italian. ‘Now would you go and tell him that
I’m here, please.’
‘So Mithoerg did that!’ he repeated to himself, when Saffrio
had left the room. Yes, Mithoerg had done something, the
utmost he could do, to prove that he remained loyal to himself.
He had chosen an exemplary act, and to it given up his life.
When Saffrio came back he was amazed at the look he caught
on Jacques’ face, the vestige of a smile.
‘You’re in luck, Thibault. He says he’ll see you. Come
upstairs.’
Following the Italian, Jacques made his way up the spiral
staircase that led off from a corner of the shop. When they
reached the attic, Saffrio stood aside, pointing to a door at the
far end, where a room had been partitioned off with a plank wall.
‘He’s there. Go in alone ; it’s better.’
718
MONDAY, AUGUST 3
As the door opened Meyncstrel looked round. He was lying
on the bed ; his cheeks were streaming and sweat had matted his
black hair, making his forehead look more prominent and his
skull smaller. His hand, clasped on a newspaper, dangled beside
the bed. A skylight just above him framed a patch of glaring
sky, and the air was furnace-hot. The tiled floor was strewn
with newspapers and half-smoked cigarettes.
Jacques’ friendly smile had won no response from Meyncstrel,
and his first eager advance had stopped short half-way to the
bed. But with a briskness of which a victim of rheumatism
would have certainly been incapable — ‘his rheumatism’s a
^^pretesto,” ’ Jacques thought to himself — Meyncstrel had
sprung to his feet. He was wearing an aviator’s overalls, and the
faded blue collar, open at the neck, revealed a hairy, scraggy
chest. He was ill- kempt, almost dirty; the over-long hair
curling up on the back of his neck made a sort of feathery ruff,
like the plumage on a duck’s rump.
‘Why have you come back to Switzerland?’
‘What was there for me to do over there?’
Meyncstrel was standing with his back to the chest-of-
drawers ; his arms were folded and he was tugging at his beard,
his eyes intent on Jacques. He had developed a new tic; his
left eye was continually twitching.
Put out of countenance by this unlooked-for reception,
Jacques started talking more or less at random.
‘You can’t imagine. Pilot, what things are like over there.
All meetings are forbidden, and there’s a censorship in force.
Even if it wanted to, no newspaper could publish anything
against the Government. I saw a fellow on the terrace of a cafe
nearly torn to pieces because he didn’t stand up and salute the
flag. What’s to be done? If one tried distributing leaflets in the
barracks, one would be arrested right away. And sabotage, as
you know, isn’t my line. In any case what’s the use of blowing
up an arsenal or a supply train, when there are hundreds of
other arsenals, thousands of supply trains? No, for the moment,
there’s nothing doing over there. Nothing!’
Meynestrel shrugged his shoulders. A wan smile hovered on
his lips.
719
SUMMER, 1914'
‘There’s nothing doing here, either.’
‘That depends.’ Jacques looked away.
Meynestrel did not seem to have heard. He went back to the
chest-of-drawers, dipped his fingers in a basin standing on it
and moistened his forehead. Noticing that Jacques had re-
mained standing, there being no chair free, he cleared a stool
of the heap of papers of all sorts encumbering it. The un-
seeing gaze he cast round the room, as he did so, was that
of a haunted man. Then he went back to the bed, seated
himself on the edge, his arms limply dangling, and heaved
a sigh.
Suddenly he spoke.
‘I miss her terribly, you know.’
The cool, almost indifferent tone was that of a man drawing
attention to an evident fact.
‘They oughtn’t have behaved like that,’ Jacques said after
a moment’s pause.
Again, Meynestrel did not seem to hear. Abruptly he rose and
walked to the door, kicking aside a newspaper. For some
minutes, dragging one leg like a wounded insect, he paced up
and down the room, with a sort of febrile listlessness.
Jacques could hardly credit that such a change should have
come over the Pilot. Meynestrel seemed to have forgotten his
presence and this gave him a better opportunity of observing
him. His face had grown leaner, the look of restrained energy
and shrewdness had disappeared. The eyes were restless still,
but the sparkle had gone out of them ; they were curiously mild
and, at moments, had a look of calm serenity. ‘No,’ Jacques
corrected himself at once, ‘that’s not serenity ; it’s weariness, the
unmeaning peace that comes of sheer exhaustion.’
‘They oughtn't^' you said?’ Meynestrel’s tone was vaguely
questioning. Suddenly he stopped pacing to and fro and planted
himself in front of Jacques. ‘If there’s one idea I’ve been effec-
tively cured of— after all that — it’s the idea of moral responsi-
bility.’
‘After all that.’ Jacques had the impression that Meynestrel
had in mind not only what had befallen him personally, the
conduct of Alfreda and Paterson, but was thinking, too, of
720
MONDAY, AUGUST 3
Europe, its statesmen and diplomatists, and the Party leaders
— himself perhaps included, and his deserted post.
Once again the Pilot walked across the room, then came back
to the bed and stretched himself on it, saying in a low voice :
‘In the last analysis, what man’s responsible — for his acts, or
for himself? Do you know anyone who is? Personally, I’ve never
come across such a one.’
A long silence ensued ; a dense, oppressive silence that
seemed one with the stifling heat, the ruthless glare.
Meynestrel lay on the bed unmoving, his eyes closed. He gave
an impression, seen thus, of being taller than his height. A hand
with tobacco-stained nails and fingers half-clenched as if
gripping an invisible ball, rested, palm outward, on the edge
of the sheet. The sleeve had slipped back, uncovering his wrist.
Jacques stared at the fingers like the talons of a bird of prey,
and the wrist, which never before had seemed to him so frail,
so feminine. ‘That bitch, she’s fairly done him in.’ No, Saffrio
had not exaggerated. But recognition of the fact did not
explain anything; once again Jacques came up against the
enigma of the Pilot’s personality. Why should a man of his
calibre throw in his hand at the very moment when it looked
as if at last his hour was going to strike?
Suddenly, without moving, Meynestrel said :
‘Mithoerg, you know, has gone — to meet his death.’
Jacques gave a start. ‘Each of us can choose his death,’ he
thought. After a few moments he said in a low voice :
‘That shouldn’t be so very difficult, when one can make one’s
death an act; a conscious, final act, that serves a purpose.’
Meynestrel’s hand twitched slightly; the cadaverous face,
with the closed eyes, seemed turned to stone.
Jacques drew himself up and with a fretful movement swept
back the lock of hair dangling across his forehead.
‘Look here !’ he said. ‘This is my plan.’
There was sudden resonance in his voice, an accent so com-
pelling, that Meynestrel turned his head quickly, opening his
eyes. Jacques’ gaze was fixed on the skylight and the light
streaming down on his upturned face, brought out its look of
fierce, invincible resolve.
721
SUMMER, 1914
‘There’s nothing to be done behind the lines. For the present
anyhow. There’s no fighting against the governments; against
martial law, press- censorship, the patriotic war-fever. But at
the front itself it’s another matter. It’s possible to act upon the
man who’s being marched up to the firing-line. And that’s the
man we’ve got to get at.’ Meynestrel made a slight movement
that Jacques took as indicating doubt, but which was only a
nervous twitch. ‘No, let me explain. Oh, I know very well how
things are to-day. The Marseillaise, the Wacht am Rhein, roses
stuck in the rifle-slings. But what of to-morrow? To-morrow
that man who is singing as he marches to the front, will be no
more than a poor devil up against the realities of war. A man
who’s underfed, whose feet are bleeding, who’s dropping with
fatigue and scared out of his wits by the first bombardments, the
first attacks, the first wounds and corpses he sets eyes on. That’s
the man to whom we can speak. That’s the man to whom we’ve
got to say: “You fool, you’re being exploited once again.
They’re trading on your patriotism, your loyalty, your courage.
Everyone’s humbugged you. Even the men who had your
trust, the men you chose to defend your rights. Now, anyhow,
you can see what they wanted of you. Revolt! Refuse to let
them rob you of your lives. Refuse to kill. Hold out your hand
to your brothers in the opposite lines, men who’ve been fooled
and exploited just as you were. Drop your rifles. Revolt!” ’
His emotion choked him. He took some deep breaths before
speaking again. ‘The thing is to find a way of getting in touch
with the men at the front. You’ll ask me — “How?” ’
Meynestrel had propped himself up on an elbow, and in his
eyes intent on Jacques there was a hint of irony which he was
unable to conceal. The look implied : ‘Exactly ! How?'
‘In an aeroplane,’ Jacques cried, without waiting for the
question to be uttered. Then in a lower voice, more slowly, he
continued. ‘We can get in touch with him from the air. We must
fly over the front lines, P'rench and German. We must drop
on them thousands and thousands of leaflets, in both languages.
The French and German staffs can prevent propaganda from
making its way into the soldiers’ barracks. But they can do
nothing against an avalanche of propaganda dropping from
722
MONDAY, AUGUST 3
the sky along a front of hundreds of miles. Our leaflets will be
broadcast on villages, camps — everywhere troops are massed
together. People will read them in France and Germany. And
they’ll be understood. They’ll be passed from hand to hand;
they’ll find their way into base camps behind the lines, even
into the hands of the civil population. They’ll remind every
peasant, every worker, French and German, what he is, what
he owes to himself, and they’ll tell him what sort of man is
facing him in the enemy lines, and that it was a monstrous,
an unthinkable crime to have launched them at each other’s
throats.’
Meynestrel’s lips parted, as if he were about to speak. But
he said nothing and stretched himself again on the bed, gazing
up at the ceiling.
‘Oh Pilot, try to imagine the effect of our leaflets, how they’ll
stir men to revolt ! Why, their effects may be absolutely shatter-
ing, decisive ! Supposing in a single sector of the lines the
opposing troops should fraternize, the contagion would spread
like wildfire all along the front. Mutinies everywhere. The
General Staffs at their wits’ end. The very day I brought off
my flight, the French and German High Commands would be
held up ; no action would be possible in the sector on which I’d
dropped my leaflets. And what an example it would be, how
it would grip the imagination of the world at large! “The
Peace ’Plane!” “A message from the air!” Yes, the victory that
International Socialism failed to win before the nations mobil-
ized, may still be won to-day. We failed to bring off the union
of the proletariat, the general strike. But we can still bring
about the fraternization of the fighting forces.’
A brief smile twisted the Pilot’s lips. Jacques took a step
towards him ; he too was smiling with the assurance of unshak-
able conviction. Without raising his voice, calmly as before, he
went on speaking.
‘There’s nothing in all this that’s not completely feasible.
But I can’t do it single-handed. I need your help, Pilot. You
know the ropes, you can procure the ’plane for me. And you
can teach me in a few days how to fly it— just well enough to
travel for some hours in a straight line. The battlefields are
723
SUMMER, 1914
within easy reach; it’s quite a short flight from the north of
Switzerland to the French and German lines in Alsace. No,
don’t shake your head ; I’ve thought it all out. I’ve weighed the
difficulties and the risks. If only you’ll help me, the difficulties
can be overcome. As for the risk — for there’s only one risk,
really — that’s my affair.’ A flush rose to his cheeks, and he fell
silent.
After a quick glance to make sure that Jacques had said all
he wanted to say, Meynestrel slowly swung himself round and
sat up, his legs dangling on the side of the bed. He refrained
from looking at Jacques. For some moments he sat thus, gently
stroking his knees. At last he said :
‘So you think that you, a deserter from the French army,
could do a flying course here in Switzerland, without arousing
suspicion, do you? And you seriously think that after a few
days’ training you could take off by yourself, read the maps,
pick up your landmarks, and keep the air all on your own, for
some hours?’ He spoke quietly, with hardly a trace of irony;
his expression was inscrutable. Then he raised one hand level
with his chin and for some moments examined absent-mindedly
the grimy fingernails, one after the other. ‘And now,’ he added
almost harshly, ‘will you please leave me to myself!’
Jacques was so taken aback that he halted stock still in the
middle of the room, trying to catch the Pilot’s eye and wonder-
ing if he had heard aright. Was he really to go away like that,
without a word of approval or advice, without a heartening
smile?
‘Au revoir^ Meynestrel said in a clear voice, without raising
his eyes.
^Au revoirP Jacques murmured and began walking to the door.
As he was going out, a feeling of revolt surged up in him ; he
stopped and turned abruptly. The Pilot was gazing at him,
his eyes shining as in olden days ; there was a glint of wonder
in their depths, but their expression was inscrutable as ever.
‘Come and see me again to-morrow.’ The words came in a
rush ; Meynestrel’s voice, too, had regained its former ring, its
rapid, clean-cut enunciation. ‘To-morrow morning, latish. At
eleven. And lie low meanwhile. Don’t let yourself be seen — by
724
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
anyone. Nobody’s got to know you’re back.’ And suddenly his
face lit up with a most disconcerting smile, a smile of tenderest
affection. ‘Till to-morrow then, old chap.’
No sooner had the door closed behind Jacques, than Meynes-
trel murmured half-aloud, ‘After all, why not?’ Not that he
had any faith in the efficacy of Jacques’ romantic scheme.
Later on, perhaps, after long months of suffering and bloodshed,
possibilities of fraternization between the hostile armies might
arise. Still, anything that might undermine morale and sow
the seeds of mutiny was, to his thinking, so much to the good.
‘Yes, I understand the youngster’s feelings very well; he’s
hungering for his slice of heroism, that’s what it comes to.’ He
rose, latched the door, and took some steps across the room.
‘It’s not a bad idea, perhaps,’ he muttered, as he laid himself
again on the bed. ‘A chance worth snatching at, of , . . a
way out.’
55
Tuesdajy, August ^
JACqUEs’ MUSINGS IN THE TRAIN TO BASEL
Resting his head on the wooden wall of the compartment,
Jacques let the steady rumble of the train vibrate through his
body, jarring every sinew, stringing up his nerves. He had the
third-class carriage to himself. The air was furnace-hot, though
all the windows were open. Dripping with sweat, he had flung
himself full length on the seat, on the side away from the sun.
And now the clangour of the train changed to the drone of a
motor, an aeroplane in flight. With his mind’s eye he saw a
flurry of white leaflets spinning down in myriads through the
bright air.
725
SUMMER, 1914
The wind that fanned his brows was hot, but the flapping
blinds gave an illusion of coolness. On the opposite seat lay his
bag, bouncing at each jolt of the train ; it was a capacious wallet
faded to a dingy yellow and bulging like a pilgrim’s scrip — an
old travelling companion, faithful to the last. Jacques had
hastily bundled into it some garments and miscellaneous papers,
without troubling to sort them out, in a mood of utter indiffer-
ence; he had reached the station only just in time for his train.
In accordance with Meynestrel’s instructions he had left Geneva
vkdthin an hour, without seeing anyone. Since the early morning
he had not eaten, had not even had time to buy a packet of
cigarettes at the station. No matter. He had set forth. And
this time it was a setting-forth anonymous, alone — ^without
return. He would have felt at peace, but for the heat, the
swarms of flies, the anvil-blows hammering incessantly on his
brain. At peace and valiant. The mental anguish, the despairs
of the days he had been living through were left behind.
He closed his eyes, but opened them again almost at once.
No retreat from the visible world was needed for him to lose
himself in his dream. . . . Cities, fields and forests glide by
beneath the wings, as the ’plane skims hilltops, dives down into
blue valleys. In the cockpit just in front of him sits the pilot.
Bundles of leaflets lie around his feet. The pilot makes a sign ;
the ’plane is flying lower ; underneath is a motley checkerwork
of blue greatcoats, red trousers, uniforms. Stooping, he
picks up a sheaf of leaflets, scatters them on the wind. The
drone of the motor swells to a roar as the ’plane goes zooming
sunwards. Jacques stoops and rises, stoops and rises, launching
white cloudlets of dancing butterflies. Meynestrel looks back
at him over his shoulder ; he is laughing. . . .
Meynestrel ! He was back on solid ground again. Meynestrel
was the pivot on which his whole endeavour turned. He had
just left Meynestrel — and how different a Meynestrel from the
‘broken man’ of yesterday! His shoulders sagged no longer;
he was once more the leader born, the man of action, of quick,
precise gestures.
When they met that morning the Pilot had greeted him with
a triumphant smile.
726
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
‘It’s all fixed up. We’re in luck. It’ll be much simpler than
I expected. We can take off in three days’ time.’
‘We?’ Still wondering if he had heard aright, Jacques had
murmured something about ‘valuable lives, men who are
indispensable to the Cause, whom it would be a crime to expose
to danger.’ But the Pilot had cut him short with a rapier-Uke
glance, the sharpness of which was tempered by a slight shrug
of the shoulders, seeming to imply : ‘I’m of no use for anything,
or anyone, nowadays.’ Then he had drawn himself up and,
speaking very rapidly, continued :
‘Let’s cut all that out, if you don’t mind, old chap. You’ve
got to clear off right away — to Basel. For a host of reasons.
If we take off at the frontier, we’re over Alsace at once. Now
let’s fix up our respective tasks. I’ll see about the “bus” ; you’ll
see to the pamphlets. Get the text written, to start with. None
too easy, that. But I expect you’ve thought it out already.
Next get it printed. That’s a job for Plattner. You don’t know
Plattner? Here’s a note for him. He has a bookshop in the
Greifengasse ; also a printing-press. Everyone there speaks both
languages, French and German, equally well ; they’ll translate
your manifesto for you. Running a million copies in both
languages off the presses should mean a few nights’ work.
Anyhow see that everything’s set for Saturday. That gives you
three clear days. It’s feasible. Don’t write to me, or anyone ; the
mail’s under observation. If anything crops up I’ll send you
news by a man I can trust. The address is in this envelope. Also
detailed instructions. And some maps. No, don’t look at them
now, you can study them in the train. We meet, then, near the
frontier; the exact place and time I’ll communicate to you
later. Agreed?’ Then only, his face had lost its hardness, and
a trace of emotion entered his voice. ‘Right. You’ve a train for
Basel at 12.30.’ He took a step forward and placed his hands
on Jacques’ shoulders. ‘I want to thank you, Jacques. You’ve
done me a tremendous service.’ His eyes were misted. For a
moment Jacques had thought that Meynestrel was going to
embrace him. But, on the contrary, the Pilot had withdrawn
his hands abruptly. ‘I’d have been bound to end up by doing
some damned silly thing. What I’m doing now may at least
727
SUMMER, 1914
be of some use.’ Then, limping, he had shepherded Jacques to
the door. ‘Hurry up or you’ll miss your train. Au revoir.’’
Jacques rose and went to the window, hoping for a breath
of air. For a while he gazed out at the lake and mountains
bathed in August sunshine, a familiar scene that for the last
time met his eyes. But his eyes saw nothing of it.
He was thinking of Jenny. Only yesterday, in the train from
Paris, each time a thought of her had flashed across his mind,
it had brought a stab of keen, unbearable pain that made him
gasp for breath. And all his heart had been a mad desire just
once again to hold that little head between his hands and gaze
into the blue depths of her eyes, to toy just once again with
her rippling hair and watch under his gaze her eyes grow dim
with love, her lips slowly parting to his kiss. Just once again to
hold that warm, slim, supple body pressed to his ! . . . And then
he had sprung up from the seat, gone out into the corridor,
clenched his hands on the window-rail and, leaning forward,
exposed his face to the stinging wind, the smoke, the flying
cinders — trying to quell the fever of his blood. Now, however,
he could think of her less poignantly ; she lay shrined in his
memory, like the dead body of a passionately loved woman.
The ineluctable bears within itself its own appeasement. Now
that the end was so near, everything — the days he had lived
through at Paris, the emotions of the past week — had suddenly
receded to a great distance. He could look back now on his
love as on his childhood — a dead past that nothing could
resuscitate. And all the future held for him was one wild,
crowded moment, a burst of livid light on his life’s horizon.
Unthinkingly he had raised the blind; now he let it fall
again. He thrust his hands into his pockets and withdrew them
at once, clammy with sweat. The heat, the flies, the din were
maddening! He sat down again, pulled off his collar and,
slumped in a corner, one arm trailing outside the window,
tried to collect his thoughts.
The all-important thing had yet to be done ; he had to write
that manifesto, on which everything hung. It must be a
lightning-flash across the darkness, something that went
straight to the hearts of men seeking each other’s death, some-
728
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
thing that would carry swift conviction and provoke a simulta-
neous uprush of revolt.
Already disconnected words were jangling in his brain; even
scraps of phrases, the clarion-calls of oratory.
‘Hostile armies — why “hostile”? Frenchmen and Germans.
The accident of birth. All fellow-men. Workers and peasants,
a majority in every land. Workers all. Why enemies? The
difference of nationality? But interests identical. Linked
together in every way. Everything conspires to make them
natural allies.’
Taking a notebook from his pocket, he started jotting down
phrases as they occurred to him.
Frenchmen and Germans, you are brothers. All alike,
and all alike victims. Victims of the lies dinned into your
ears. Not one of you has left, of his own accord, his home,
wife and children, his factory, shop or farm, to serve as a
target for other workers exactly like himself. All of you
alike fear death, all hate the idea of killing, all believe that
human life is sacred. All realize that war is folly. There’s
not one of you but longs to escape from this nightmare
war, to get back as soon as he can to his wife, children and
work, to peace and liberty. And yet here you are to-day,
facing each other, with loaded rifles in your hands, ready
blindly, at the first word of command, to slaughter men
you’ve never seen, men whom you have no reason to hate,
without having any idea why you are being forced to act
as murderers.
The train slowed down, stopped. ‘Lausanne!’ Memories
flashed across his mind. The Pension Kammerzin, his room with
the glossy pitchpine floor, Sophia.
Fearing to be recognized, he resisted the temptation to
alight. Holding aside the curtain, he peeped out and gazed at
the platforms, the newspaper-stall. Over there was Number 3
Platform — ^he had walked up and down it one winter night, at
Antoine’s side, before catching the train that was to bring him
back to Paris, to his father’s deathbed. It seemed to him now
as if that journey with his brother had taken place a full ten
years ago.
729
SUMMER, 1914
Two police officers walked by, inspecting the train. An
elderly couple entered Jacques’ carriage and settled down. The
man, an old artisan with gnarled hands, had put on his
‘Sunday best’ for the journey. Now he took off his coat and tie,
mopped his brows and lit a cigar. The woman took the coat
and, after folding it carefully, laid it on her knees.
Jacques settled himself in his corner and took out his notebook
again. Feverishly he scribbled :
Within under a fortnight, a monstrous, collective
madness has come over Europe. The Press, lying journal-
ists. All nations doped with the same lies. What only
yesterday no self-respecting man could bear to contem-
plate has come to seem inevitable, necessary and legiti-
mate. Everywhere we see the selfsame crowds of people,
goaded deliberately into fanaticism, ready in a white-hot
frenzy to spring at each other’s throats, not knowing why
they do it. To die and to kill have become synonyms of
heroism, badges of honour. Why should it be? Who are
the men responsible for this state of things?
He took from his pocket-book a folded sheet of paper ; on it
was a phrase that Vanheede had copied for him from a book on
Wilhelm II ; an extract from one of the Kaiser’s speeches :
I am convinced that wars between nations are oftener
than not an outcome of the ambitions and intrigues of
certain statesmen, who use these criminal expedients for
the sole purpose of keeping in their hands the reins of
power and increasing their popularity.
I must get hold of the German original, Jacques reflected.
So as to be able to say to them: ‘Look! That’s what your
Kaiser himself says.’ How shall I get it? Vanheede? No;
Meynestrel forbade me to write letters to anybody. The public
library at Basel, perhaps. But I don’t even know the name of
the book. Might manage to trace it. No; no time. Still — I’ve
got to find that German original somehow. . . . He felt the blood
rush to his head, fuddling his thoughts. ‘The men responsible,’
he murmured blankly. He could not keep still, shifted his
730
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
position. Tiresome, those people in the carriage ! The old
woman was following his movements with obvious curiosity.
She was in the seat facing him ; it was too high for her and her
stumpy legs rocked to and fro, with the swaying of the train.
White stockings, black boots. To and fro. ‘The men responsi-
ble . . .’ Got to find that original. If that old woman keeps on
staring. I’ll . . . She fished some plums, a hunk of bread, out
of her basket ; fell to munching the plums slowly, methodically,
spitting the stones into her hand. A wedding-ring glinted. On
her forehead a fly settled, flew off, settled again. She did not
seem to feel it. Like a corpse. . . . Intolerable !
He rose to his feet.
How to trace that book? At Basel? No, useless. Waste of
time. Too late. . . . He knew he would never trace it.
Hungering for a breath of fresh air, he went out into the
corridor and rested his hands on the window-ledge. Black clouds
were massing round the mountain crests. A storm coming.
That’s why it’s so sultry. Seen from above, the water of the lake
had the density of quicksilver, and its dull sheen. Thickly
sprayed with sulphate, the leafage of the vineyards descending
to the water’s edge shone a poisonous, metallic blue.
The men responsible. When you want to trace a fire-raiser,
the first thing is to discover who will profit by the fire. He
mopped his face, took out his pencil again and, leaning against
the door-jamb, tried to think himself into indifference — to
everything, to the old woman, the suffocating heat, the flies,
the noise, the jolts, the landscape, the whole hostile universe
around him. Feverishly he scribbled :
A hidden power, the State, has dealt with you as a
farmer deals with his cattle. What is the State? Is the
French State or the German State truly and effectively
representative of the People, does it stand for the interests
of the majority? No. In France as in Germany the State
represents a mere fraction, it is the mouthpiece of a gang
of speculators who owe their power to their wealth alone
and who have under their control to-day the banks, trusts,
transport services, newspapers, munition factories — every-
thing! They are the absolute rulers of a servile social
731
SUMMER, 1914
system that promotes the interests of a favoured few at the
expense of the greatest number. We have seen this system
at work during these last weeks. We have seen it crushing
like a Juggernaut under its wheels every effort to advance
the cause of peace. And it is this same system that’s
hounding you on to-day across the frontier with fixed
bayonets, in the defence of interests that are no concern
of yours, that actually are baneful to almost all of you.
Men who are being sent to their death have surely the
right of asking who stands to profit by their sacrifice, of
knowing to whom and to what end they are giving up
their lives.
Well, those responsible, in the first instance, are the
small group who exploit the public — the big business men
engaged in ruthless competition with each other, nation
against nation ; who have no qualms about despatching to
the slaughter-house the helpless herd, so as to assure their
privileges and pile up greater and greater wealth. Wealth
that far from enriching the masses and giving them a better
life, will serve only to enslave still more completely such of
you as escape the shambles.
But these exploiters of the people are not the only men
responsible. In every land they’ve enlisted confederates in
the ranks of their respective governments. Amongst those
responsible are these men, their satellites, that handful of
wind-bag politicians, whom the Kaiser himself denounced.
Got to trace that original, he thought again. I simply mnsl
get hold of it.
A gang of swindlers, ambassadors, ministers of state,
ambitious generals, who, working behind the scenes in
Foreign Offices and High Commands, have by their plot-
ting and scheming, callously brought you into peril of
death, without faking your opinion, without so much as
warning you — ^you, the people of France and you, the
German people, the pawns in their vile game. For that is
how things are ; in this so-called democratic Europe of the
twentieth century no nation has managed to get control
of its foreign policy; none of the parliaments you have
elected, which are supposed to represent you, is ever
informed of the secret commitments which from one day
732
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
to another may plunge you, every man of you, into the
horrors of war.
And behind these arch-criminals, in France and Ger-
many alike, are all those who, more or less consciously,
have made war possible — either by conniving at the wild-
cat schemes of high finance, or by encouraging the ambi-
tions of the politicians by their partisan approval. I have
in mind the conservative parties, employers’ associations,
the nationalist Press. The Churches, too, are blood-guilty ;
almost everywhere the clergy plays the part of a spiritual
police-force acting in the service of the proi>ertied class.
Everywhere the Churches have played traitor to their
spiritual function, and become the allies, or cat’s-paws, of
the powers of high finance.
He stopped and tried to read what he had written. The
strain of gripping the short stump of pencil, his fever, his
uncomfortable position and the motion of the train had made
the writing almost illegible.
It won’t do, he thought. Too long-winded, too repetitious.
I’ll have to weed it out. It’s got to be terse, compact, if it’s to
grip their minds. And yet, to start them thinking things over,
pulling themselves together, all the fundamental issues have to
be included. Difficult !
His legs seemed giving way under him. He thought quickly.
Must find a seat. Alone, if possible. He went along the corridor,
hunting for an empty carriage. All full ; people talking at the
top of their own voices. There was nothing for it ; he went back
to his old place.
The sun was going down; the carriage bathed in a red,
angry glare. Prostrated by the heat, the man was snoring,
propped on an elbow, his dead cigar still between his lips. The
old woman was fanning her face with a newspaper, the coat
still spread across her knees. She had looked away as Jacques
came in, but now and again he caught her darting a furtive,
ill-natured glance in his direction.
Folding his arms, he closed his eyes and counted up to a
hundred, to compose his jangled nerves. And suddenly a flood
of weariness engulfed him ; he fell asleep.
733
SUMMER, 1914
He woke with a start, amazed at having slept. What time
was it? The train was slowing down. His travelling com-
panions were on their feet; the man had put on his coat,
relighted his cigar ; the woman was closing the padlock on her
basket. Jacques tried to recognize the station. Berne already?
'Griitzi,' said the man politely as he walked past Jacques.
The platform was crowded ; there was a general rush for the
train. Jacques’ compartment was invaded by a loquacious
German-speaking family; mother, grandmother, two small
girls, a maid. The luggage- rack sagged under a load of hampers
and children’s toys. The two women looked tired and dejected.
The little girls, whom the heat had rendered quarrelsome,
started fighting over who was to have the corner seat. These
people, Jacques surmised, had been caught by the war on their
holiday and were hurrying home; the father, probably, had
joined his regiment some days before.
The train began to move. Jacques squeezed his way out into
the corridor, which was full of people standing at the windows,
mostly men.
On his left three young Swiss were conversing in French.
‘Viviani’s staying on as Prime Minister.’
‘Who’s this fellow Doumergue that’s taking over the Foreign
Office?’
On his right a young student, his notebooks tucked under his
arm, and an elderly man wearing glasses who looked like a
professor, were reading the papers.
‘I say, what do you think of this?’ grinned the young man,
handing his companion the Journal de Geneve. ‘The Pope’s had
a bright idea, it seems. He’s just launched an appeal “To all
the Catholics of World.” ’
‘Well, it may be news to you, but there are still several
millions of catholics in the world. And if it was perfectly
definite and strongly worded — and if it had been launched
before this started — well, the Pope’s anathema carries weight,
you know.’
‘Read it,’ the student said. ‘I suppose you think he formally
denounces war, tells off the great Powers and lumps all the
nations at war together in one and the same denunciation —
734
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
something really hair-raising in the excommunicative line!
Wait a bit, though! What about apostolic prudence? “Be ye
wise as serpents!” No, all he finds to say to the milhons of
catholics who’re going to start plugging at each other to-
morrow, and who’re presumably waiting for orders from His
Holiness to put themselves straight with their consciences —
what he says isn’t, “Thou shalt do no murder ! Refuse to fight !”
(If he’d done so, quite likely they’d have had to call off the
war.) No, in a nice paternal tone he says, “Go to it, my sons !
Go to it, but don’t forget to elevate your souls towards their
Maker,” — whatever that may mean !’
Jacques listened with half an ear. A memory flashed across
his mind of a priest he had noticed— where was it? At the Gare
du Nord, when he’d been seeing Antoine off. A young, athletic-
looking prelate, bright-eyed — of the ‘muscular Christian,’
‘Boys’ Brigade’ persuasion, the donee most likely of some fat
advowson — with two haversacks slung across his high-reefed
cassock, brand-new mountaineering boots and a sergeant’s
forage cap rakishly cocked over an ear. The Gare du Nord,
Antoine. Antoine, Daniel, Jenny! All these people whom
memory involuntarily conjured up, and all these men and
women round him, belonged to another world, one that was
his no longer, the world of living men, men for whom there
was a future, who would continue, without him, on life’s way.
The three young Swiss on his left were discussing with
indignation the ultimatum sent by Germany to Belgium.
Jacques moved towards them, listened.
‘It was on the posters. A German army corps has crossed the
Belgian frontier and is marching on Liege ’
A youngish man came out of neighbouring compartment and
joined the group. He was a Belgian, hurrying back to Namur,
to enlist.
‘Let me tell you,’ he said at once, ‘I’m a socialist. And that
precisely is the reason why I don’t stand for Right being
crushed by Might.’
He launched into a long harangue, raising his voice, declaim-
ing against ‘German savagery’ and vaunting the merits of
‘Western Civilization.’
735
SUMMER, 1914
Some other passengers came up. All alike expressed disgust
with the brutal methods adopted by the German Government.
‘Ze Belgian Parliament met dis morning.’ The speaker, a man
in the fifties, had a thick German accent. ‘Tink you that ze
socialists will vote for the var levy?’
‘Like one man, sir!’ The Belgian rounded on the speaker, the
light of battle in his eyes.
Jacques kept silence. He knew the Belgian’s forecast was
correct. And ragefully he recalled the stand taken by the
Belgian socialists at Brussels, their professions of uncompro-
mising socialism. Vandervelde. . . . Last Thursday, less than a
week ago.
‘In Paris, too,’ one of the Swiss remarked, ‘it’s to-day the
Chamber meets to vote supplies for the war.’
‘It’ll be the same thing at Paris,’ the Belgian cried. ‘In all
the allied countries the socialists will vote in the same way.
We have Justice on our side. This war has been forced on us.
In the fight against Prussian militarism the place of every
socialist is in the firing line.’ As he spoke, he shot furious glances
at the man with the German accent, who held his peace.
Your Country Needs You ! Down with German Imperialism !
The same cry everywhere. In the latest issues of the radical
French papers, that Jacques had read the day before, it was
the same story : everywhere the socialists withdrew their
opposition to the war. A few sporadic meetings were still being
announced as taking place in the suburbs, but they were only
to discuss ways and means of providing relief for families
whose breadwinners were at the front. The war had become
an accepted fact, against which no one protested. The copy of
the Guerre Sociale which Jacques had read was particularly
revealing. On the front page Herve had the audacity to
write :
Jaures, well for you you are not here to watch the havoc
of our dreams. But how sad that you are not amongst us
still to see how nobly our highly-strung, enthusiastic race,
now as always idealist at heart, has responded to the call
of duty! You would have been proud of our socialist
workers.
736
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
Still more significant was the ‘Rail way men’s Manifesto’
issued by the Railway Workers’ Union, which only a few days
before had been so vigorously proclaiming its anti-nationalism.
In this hour of common peril, party differences are wiped
out. Socialists, Trade-unionists and Revolutionaries, all
will join in frustrating Kaiser Wilhelm’s knavish schemes,
all will answer “Present !” when they hear the call of
the Republic.
What irony ! Jacques had thought. At last, what had seemed
impossible — a united front of all the various left-wing parties in
every land — has been brought into being. Brought into being by
what? By war ! Whereas if it had been created against war . . . !
The champions of the Socialist International to-day are every-
where unanimous in approving of the war, from a nationalist
standpoint. Whereas it could have been prevented if, a fortnight
ago, they’d agreed to launch a preventive general strike. The last
faint echo of independence Jacques had discovered was in the
English Daily News. It contained an article, couched in the
terms of a declaration of political faith, which had been written
before Germany’s Note to Belgium. After protesting against the
war-mongering notions that were beginning to be foisted upon
the British public, the writer of the article emphatically declared
that it was England’s duty to retain her freedom of action, her
ability to act as mediator, and to stand out of the war whatever
happened, even if one of the belligerents showed an intention
of sending troops through Belgium. But that was yesterday.
Now Great Britain had officially announced her participation
in the dance of death, on high idealistic grounds.
The ringing tones of the Belgian socialist echoed down the
corridor.
‘Jaur^s himself, were he with us, would be the first to set
us an example. Why, sir, Jaures was all eagerness to join the
colours.’
Jaures, Jacques mused. Would he have stopped the rot?
Would even he have held out to the end? And suddenly a
picture rose before his eyes of the scene outside the cafe in the
Rue Montmartre, the silent crowd massed in the darkness, the
737
BB
SUMMER, 1914
ambulance van. . . . Jenny’s pressure on his arm. The funeral’s
to-day. Flowers, speeches, flags, military bands. They’ve
annexed the corpse of the lost leader, and are parading it as a
patriotic emblem through the streets of Paris, through a city
under arms. And if at such a moment no one protests, no rioting
takes place, it means that all is over, the Workers’ International
is dead and done with, may as well be buried with him in
the tomb.
For the present, indeed, all was ended in the ‘propagandized’
cities; behind the lines all the vital chords had snapped. But
in the firing line, Jacques was convinced, the unhappy men
facing the grim realities of war were only waiting for a signal
to rise and break the fatal spell. One gleam of truth, and revolt
would break loose, bringing their long-sought liberation.
Again, disconnected phrases started racing through his
mind. ‘You are young, living men. They are sending you to
your death. You’re being violently robbed of your lives — and
how will they be employed? To furnish fresh capital for the big
bankers to pile into their strong-boxes.’ He felt in his pocket
for his notebook. But how make notes in all this noise, with all
these people moving to and fro? Anyhow in twenty minutes he
would be at Basel. There he would have to go and hunt for
Plattner, look for lodgings, a room where he could settle down
to work.
In a flash his mind was made up. He had done well to sleep.
He was feeling fit, clear-headed now. Plattner could wait. It
would be idiotic to let this ferment of ideas that had come over
him die down unused. Instead of running about the town he
would take refuge in a corner of the waiting-room and get on
to paper the ideas seething up in his brain, before they had
time to cool. In the waiting-room, or why not the refreshment-
room — for he felt desperately hungry?
738
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
56
Tuesday^ August 4
JACQUES SKETCHES OUT HIS MESSAGE
A HEAVEN-SENT rcfugc, the Restauration Dritterklasse was
SO enormous that its customers, many though they were, took
up only the centre of the hall ; at the back it was quite empty.
Choosing a large table flanking the wall, one amongst
several similar tables all unoccupied, Jacques took off his coat
and eased his collar. He had eaten a plateful of succulent,
generously larded veal, fricasseed and served with carrots, and
drunk a whole carafe of iced water.
Electric fans hummed overhead. The waitress placed on his
table writing materials and a cup of fragrant coffee.
A waiter, carrying a tray, was moving about the room.
‘Cigarren! Cigamtten!' ‘Cigarretten!^ — ^yes, rather! After twelve
hours’ privation the first puff was magical. A heady sense of
well-being, a warm plenitude of life, throbbed in his veins,
making his hands tremble. Leaning forward, blinking across
the smoke, he dashed down the ideas as they came into his
head, inconsequently. He would sort them out later on, when
he felt in a calmer mood.
His pen galloped across the paper.
Frenchmen and Germans, you have been fooled.
This war is being represented to you in both camps
not only as a defensive war but as a fight for the Rights of
Nations, for Justice and Liberty. Why? Because they know
well that not one German peasant or workman, not one
French peasant or workman, would have let his blood be
shed in an offensive war, a war to win new territories or
markets.
On both sides they have told you you are fighting to
stamp out militarism, your neighbours’ militarism, to
check their bid for world-power. As though there were
anything to choose between one militarism and another;
739
SUMMER, 1914
as though militant nationalism hadn’t had as many cham-
pions, of recent years, in France as it has had in Germany !
As though both your Governments alike had not been
deliberately courting the same risks of war ! Yes, you have
been bamboozled. All of you have been led to think that
you were going to defend your country against the das-
tardly attack of an aggressor nation — while in actual fact
both General Staffs, French and German alike, have been
studying for years, with the same cynical effrontery, the
best method of getting in the first lightning blow. While,
all along, in each army alike, the High Command has
aimed at reaping the advantage of an ‘act of aggression,’
the act at which they now hold up their hands in pious
horror, so as to justify in your eyes the war they have
deliberately brought upon you.
You have been fooled. The best amongst you believe in
good faith that they are giving up their lives for the cause
of justice amongst the peoples of the earth. Whereas neither
has justice nor the people of any country been taken into
the least account — except in official speeches — and nowhere
have the wishes of the nation been ascertained by a plebis-
cite. No, you are all being sent to your deaths in conse-
quence of old, stupid, secret treaties, of the contents of which
you knew nothing and which, had you known them, not
one of you would have endorsed. Both sides have been
fooled. You Frenchmen have been led to think that it was
your duty to bar the way to the invaders and defend civil-
ization against the hordes of barbarism. You Germans
have been led to think that your country was encircled,
that its existence was at stake, and its prosperity was
imperilled by the greed of foreigners, against whom it
was your duty to defend it. German and Frenchman, each
of you has been fooled ; each of you has believed, in all
good faith, that this war is a Holy War — on his side only.
Each has felt he owed it to his country to sacrifice, unre-
servedly, his happiness, his liberty, his life, to the national
‘honour’ and the ‘triumph of justice.’ But you have been
fooled. The campaign of lying propaganda has done its
work in a few days; you have been inoculated with the
war-fever — you, even you, who will be the victims of the
war ! And you have marched heroically against each other
740
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
at the first call to arms from your country — ^your country
that was never in any real danger. You did not realize
that on both sides alike the ruling classes were using you,
the workers, as their cat’s-paw. You did not realize you
were being asked to bear the brunt of their criminal
schemes, to serve as the small change of conquest, help-
less accomplices and victims of their insatiable greed for
power and gold.
It is with exactly the same lies that the powers- that-be
in France and in Germany have tricked you. Never until
now had the European Governments shown such utter lack
of scruple, and such devilish skill, in piling calumny on
calumny, suggesting false motives and spreading false news
— in a word, employing every method of creating hatred
and alarm — so as to make sure of roping you in as their
accomplices. Within a few days, without even having been
given the time to look around and count the dreadful cost
of what was being required of you, you have been herded
into base-camps, issued with equipment, and hounded
on to murder and to death. All your rights as free men
have been wiped out. On both sides, on the same day,
martial law was declared, a ruthless military dictatorship
established. Anyone who tried to think for himself, who
dared to ask ‘What’s it all about?’ was ‘for it!’ In any
case, who of you was capable of taking a clear view? Of
the true facts you had not been given an inkling ; your only
source of information was the national Press, the official
lie-factory! All-powerful within its own closed frontiers,
the Press had come to speak with a single voice, the voice
of the men in command, for whom your ignorance,
credulity, docility were essential to enable them to attain
their ends.
Your mistake lay in failing to forestall the conflagra-
tion while there was yet time. For, though you had on
your side an overwhelming majority of pacifist-minded
men, you failed to organize it, to bring it into action when
the need arose, and to launch against the war-mongers a
concerted movement of all classes in all lands, that would
have forced the Governments of Europe to bow to your
desire for peace.
Now, everywhere, an iron discipline has gagged the
741
SUMMER, 1914
voice of individual protest. Everywhere you have been
reduced to the blind subservience of animals in blinkers.
Never before has humanity been brought so low, has
intelligence been so completely stifled. Never before have
Governments forced men’s minds into so total an abdi-
cation of their rights ; so brutally repressed the aspirations
of the masses.
Jacques stubbed out on the saucer the end of his cigarette,
which was beginning to burn his lips. Then with a fretful
gesture he dashed back the lock of hair that was dangling on
his forehead, and wiped his sweating cheeks. ‘So brutally
repressed the aspirations of the masses.’ The cadence of the
phrase rang in his ears as if he had spoken it aloud, addressing
the two armies, which a vivid hallucination had suddenly
evoked before his eyes. He felt the same thrill, the selfsame
sense of being uplifted above himself, above a listening people
massed below him, that had at times swept over him in the
past, when a sudden uprush of faith, of love and indignation,
an urgent passion to convince and move men’s minds, had sped
him on to the platform of a public meeting and spent itself in
a tempestuous flood of oratory.
Without lighting the cigarette that he had taken from his
pocket, he let his pen run on again.
Now you have sampled it, their war. You have heard the
bullets whining past your ears and the groans of wounded,
dying men. Now you can gauge the horrors of the shambles
they have in store for you. Already most of you have
awakened to realities and, deep down within yourselves,
feel a first inkling of shame — of disgust at having let
yourselves be fooled. Memories of home, of the dear ones
you were so absurdly ready to forsake, are crowding back
into your thoughts. Under the impact of reality your
minds are beginning to work again, your eyes are opening.
What will it be when you have realized the squalid
motives, the lust for conquest and world-power, the greed
for gain of which none of you will ever see a penny, the
stranglehold of high finance — the hidden hand behind
this war — what will it be when you realize that it is for the
sake of these that you are being asked to lay down your lives?
742
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
What have they made of your liberty, your consciences,
your human dignity? What of the happiness of your homes?
What of the only precious thing a worker has to safeguard
—his life? Has the French State, has the German State,
the right to tear you away from your families and from
your work, and to dispose of your lives against your most
obvious personal interests, against your will, your convic-
tions, your most human, most sacred and legitimate
instincts? What gave them this appalling power over you,
the power of life and death? Your ignorance. Your apathy.
All that is needed is to stop and think if only for a
moment, to make one fervent effort of revolt, and you can
still break free.
Are you incapable of it? Will you tamely wait under a
storm of shell-fire, suffering hideously in mind and body,
for the far-off day of peace? A peace which you will never
know, you the first victims of the war. Very likely even the
younger generation called to replace you in the firing line
and sacrificed like you in “glorious” carnage, will not
survive to see that day.
Do not say it is too late, that nothing is left to you now
but to ‘see it through’ and submit like sheep led to the
slaughter. That would be a coward’s pretext.
And it would be a lie.
On the contrary, this is the moment to throw off the
yoke. Liberty, safety, the joy of life— all the happiness that
has been snatched from you— you can regain them ; it rests
with you and you alone.
Take thought, take action, before it is too late.
You have a means, an infallible means, of making it
impossible for your High Commands to keep up one day
longer this fratricidal butchery. It is — to refuse to fight. To
cut the ground under the feet of those in power by a simul-
taneous revolt.
You can do it.
You can do it to-morrow morning.
You can do it without incurring any risk of reprisals.
But, to bring it off, there are three absolute conditions :
that your revolt should be sudden, that it should be general,
that it should be simultaneous.
Sudden, because you must not give your officers time to
743
SUMMER, 1914
take precautionary measures. General and simultaneous,
because your success depends on mass action set on foot at
the same moment on both sides of the frontier. If there
were only fifty of yoii who refused to do their “duty,”
inevitably they would end up before the firing squad. But
if you were five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand — if
you rose like one man in both armies on your sector, if your
movement of revolt spread like wildfire from regiment to
regiment, if at last you brought into play the invincible
force of the greatest number — no courts-martial could cope
with the situation. And your officers, and the Governments
that have set these officers over you, would in a few hours’
time find that their powers for evil had been scotched,
paralysed, smashed for ever.
Try to realize the tremendous importance of this crucial
moment in your lives. To regain forthwith your inde-
pendence, only three things are needed and those three
things rest with yourselves alone; your revolt must be
sudden, it must be unanimous, and it must be simultaneous.
His face was convulsed, his breath coming in quick, strident
gasps. He stared up at a window opposite him with unseeing
eyes ; the world of reality had faded into mist and in a great
silence he was contemplating a sea of anguished faces, the
legions of doomed men gazing piteously up at him,
Frenchmen and Germans, you are all men, all brothers.
For the sake of your mothers, wives and children, for the
sake of all that is noblest in you, for the sake of that
creative impulse transmitted from the dawn of civilization
which tends to shape man into a just and rational being
— grasp this last chance ! Safety is within arm’s reach. Rise
up and act, before it is too late !
Thousands and thousands of copies of this appeal are
being broadcast to-day in France and Germany, along the
whole front. At this very moment, in both camps, thou-
sands of French and German hearts are thrilling with the
same hope as yours, thousands of fists are brandished,
thousands of men declaring for revolt, the triumph of Life
over lies and death.
Courage ! Do not hesitate ! The least delay may ruin all.
Your revolt must break out to-morrow and no later.
744
AUGUST 5 TO 8
To-morrow, at the same hour, at sunrise, all together,
French and Germans, fired by the same heroism and the
same fraternal love, throw down your arms and join your
voices in a great shout rolling along the lines, the cheers
of men set free.
Rise up all together and refuse to take part in the war,
compel your Governments to declare immediate peace !
Up to-morrow, all of you, with the first ray of dawn !
Carefully he replaced his pen on the inkstand. Slowly he
straightened up, drawing back a little from the table. His eyes
were lowered. All his movements were gentle, bated, noiseless
— like a bird-watcher’s, heedful not to alarm his quarry. All the
wrinkles on his brow had been smoothed away. He seemed to
be waiting for something, for some slightly painful process to
run its course within him, for his heart to steady down, the
pulsing in his temples to die away, and the arduous ascent
towards the world of real things to take place without needless
suffering.
Mechanically he gathered together the loose sheets scrawled
in feverish haste, without erasures. He folded them, smoothed
them out, then, on a sudden impulse, hugged them to his
breast. For a moment he bowed his head and, without moving
his lips, murmured like a prayer: ‘To bring back peace to
the world.’
57
August ^ to 8
JACqUEs’ SOJOURN AT BASEL
Plattner had found a room for Jacques in the house of
an old woman, the mother of a militant socialist named Stumpf,
who had been sent by the Party on special service. It was given
745
SUMMER, 1914
out that Jacques had come to Basel for research- work at the
Public Library. Plattner had even provided him with a written
contract for such work. Since the outbreak of war the police
had been extremely vigilant; thus if they showed an interest
in Jacques’ doings, he would be able to furnish proof not only
of a residence but of an occupation.
Old Frau Stumpf’s house in the Erlenstrasse — a mean street
not far from the Greifengasse in which was Plattner’s shop —
was a ramshackle shanty due shortly to be pulled down. The
room let to Jacques had the form of a narrow corridor with a
low window at each end. One window gave on to the court-
yard, from which rose a mingled stench of rabbit-hutches and
decaying refuse. The other overlooked the street, with a view
across to the coal-depots at the Baden Station — German terri-
tory, or almost so. The room was immediately under the roof,
which was set so low that Jacques could reach it with his hand.
The August sun, beating on the tiles all day, kept the room at
the temperature of an oven.
In this stifling atmosphere Jacques settled down to the
composition of his manifesto. His only meal consisted of the
slice of bread and goose-dripping that Frau Stumpf put at his
door each morning beside a mug of strong black coffee. Some-
times, round about noon, the heat grew so overpowering that
he went out in quest of a breath of air. But no sooner was he
outside than a craving to return to his hovel came over him
and he hurried back. Stretched on his bed, streaming with
perspiration, he closed his eyes and eagerly picked up the
broken threads of his intoxicating dream. . . . An airplane in
full flight, Meynestrel in the pilot’s seat, himself in the cockpit
reaching down for handful after handful of leaflets and strewing
them on the air. The drone of the motor seemed to merge into
the pulsing of his blood ; that great white bird was he himself,
plucking from his bosom the winged words of peace and scatter-
ing them upon the world. ‘Up to-morrow, all of you, with the
first ray of dawn !’ The various parts of the message had fallen
into place ; little by little each phrase had taken definite form ;
he knew them all by heart. And as, lying on his back, he gazed
up at the roof, he kept on repeating them to himself. Sometimes
746
AUGUST 5 TO 8
he jumped off the bed and ran to his table to modify a para-
graph, change the position of a word. Then again he flung
himself upon the bed. He was hardly conscious of the squalor
of his surroundings, so lost was he in his daydream. He saw the
insurrectionary movement spreading from company to com-
pany, the officers excitedly conferring, the N.C.O.’s at their
wits’ end, communications cut with General Headquarters,
punitive measures ruled out as impracticable. And only one
thing left to do, if the Governments wanted to save their face :
to arrange an armistice forthwith.
His fixed idea at once played havoc with his nerves and
buoyed him up — -like the coffee he was drinking at all hours.
He could dispense with neither. When some urgent task such
as a brief visit to the Library, or even a chance encounter with
Frau Stumpf on the stairs, distracted him for a moment from
his dreaming, he felt so prostrated that he rushed back at once
to his solitude, like an addict to his drug. No sooner had he
entered his room than peace came back to him, and not merely
peace but a sort of morbid, feverish exhilaration. When at times
his hand started trembling so violently that he had to stop
writing, or when, in the fragment of looking-glass nailed to the
wall, he caught sight of his sweating face and saw his sunken
cheeks and haggard eyes, it occurred to him — for perhaps the
first time in his life — that he was a sick man. The thought made
him smile. What did that matter now?
Sleep was impossible in the burning nights ; every ten
minutes he rose, dipped a towel in the water-jug and slaked
his fevered limbs. Sometimes he lingered at his window, gazing
out at what seemed like a glimpse of hell. Bathed in a livid
sheen of arc-lamps, a horde of wraithlike forms scurried about
the wharves, in an incessant din; further on, in the gloom of
the coalyards, drays and motor-lorries clattered to and fro,
lights flashed out and sped in all directions. Still further on,
again, along a glimmering network of rails, never-ending
goods-trains shunted and whistled before plunging one after
the other into the black night of Germany at. war. Then he
smiled. He alone knew. He alone knew that all this sound and
fury was in vain. Deliverance was at hand. The pamphlet was
747
SUMMER, 1914
finished. Kappel was going to make the German version of it ;
Plattner to print twelve hundred thousand copies. Meynestrel
was making arrangements at Zurich for the ’plane. Only a
few days more. ‘Up to-morrow, all of you, with the first ray
of dawn !’
After forty-eight hours’ feverish work he felt the time had
come to hand over his manuscript. ‘Have everything ready for
Saturday,’ Meynestrel had told him.
He found Plattner at his shop, ensconced among bales of
paper, in the back room; its double baize doors were closed,
as were the windows, though the morning was well advanced.
Plattner was an ugly, unhealthy-looking man in the forties ; he
had stomach-trouble and a bad breath. His thorax jutted out
like a bird’s breast, and his bald pate, scraggy neck and vast
hook-nose brought to mind a vulture. The overhang of the
enormous nose seemed to throw the whole body out of plumb,
canting it forward, so that Plattner looked always on the point
of falling headlong — which gave a feeling of discomfort to all
who met him for the first time. But after the first shock caused
by his grotesque appearance had worn off, no one could fail
to be attracted by the frankness of his gaze, the geniality of
his smile, and the gentleness of his rather sing-song voice, apt
to wax emotional on any pretext and always vibrant with
hearty affability. But Jacques had no need for new friends;
from now on he stood alone.
Plattner was in low spirits. He had just received news that
the Social Democrats in Germany had voted in favour of the
War Levy.
‘That the French socialists should have stood in with the
Government when it came to a division was bad enough.’ His
voice shook with indignation. ‘Still, after the murder of Jaures,
one rather expected something of the sort. But that the Ger-
mans, that our German Social Democrat party, the greatest
proletarian force in Europe, should behave like that — well, it’s
the hardest knock I’ve had in my whole career as a militant
socialist. I’d refused to believe the government-inspired news-
papers. I’d have laid any odds that the Social Democrats would
grasp, to a man, this opportunity of inflicting a public rebuff
748
AUGUST 5 TO 8
on the Imperial Government. When I read the official commu-
niques, I chuckled. “To-morrow,” I said to myself, “they’ll
have an eye-opener!” And then . . .! It’s no good blinking
the facts to-day. Those communiques were true, damnably
true. I haven’t heard yet what went on behind the scenes.
Likely as not we’ll never know the truth. Rayer’s story is that
Bethmann-Hollweg sent for Sudekum on the twenty-ninth to
get him to arrange for the Social-Democrat Party to withdraw
its opposition.’
‘The twenty-ninth!’ Jacques exclaimed. ‘But on the twenty-
ninth at Brussels Haase made that speech. ... I heard him.’
‘That’s as may be. Anyhow Rayer asserts that when the
German delegates got back to Berlin, a meeting of the central
committee was called and they caved in all along the line. So
the Kaiser knew he could go ahead with mobilization, that
there wouldn’t be a rising or a general strike. I suspect the
Party had a secret meeting before the Reichstag session — and
a pretty stormy one it must have been ! I still decline to lose
faith in people like Liebknecht, Lederboer, Clara Zetkin and
Rosa Luxemburg. Only, they must have been in a minority,
they had to bow to the traitors. Still there’s no getting behind
it; they voted with the Government. Thirty years’ hard work,
thirty years of slow, painfully achieved progress — all wiped
out! In one day Social Demo’cracy has lost for ever the good
opinion of the proletarian world. In the Duma, anyhow, the
Russian socialists didn’t kowtow to Czarism. All of them voted
against war. In Servia, too. I’ve seen the copy of a letter from
Duchan Popovitch ; the socialist opposition in Servia refuses to
haul down its colours. Yet that’s the one country where there
would have been some excuse for taking a patriotic line, with
the invader at their gates. Even in England socialism is putting
up a stubborn fight; Keir Hardie won’t let himself be beaten.
I’ve read the latest declaration of the I.L.P. All that’s encour-
aging, you can’t deny. We mustn’t lose heart. Little by little
we’ll get a hearing. They won’t succeed in gagging all of us.
Yes, our one hope is to stand firm, with all the world against
us! International Socialism will come to life again one day.
And that day it will call to account the men who had its trust
749
SUMMER, 1914
and whom the Imperialist Governments have brought to heel
so easily.’
Jacques let him ramble on, nodding approval more out of
politeness than anything else ; after what he had witnessed in
Paris defections of this sort had lost the power of surprising him.
Some newspapers were lying on the table. Picking them up,
he glanced idly at the headlines.
A hundred thousand Germans marching on Liege.
Britain mobilizing Fleet and Army. Grand Duke Nicholas
appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army.
Italy officially announces her neutrality. Successful French
Offensive in Alsace.
Alsace ! He put down the newspapers. So fighting had started
in Alsace ! ‘Now you have sampled it, their war. You have heard
the bullets whining past. . . .’ All that withdrew his thoughts
from the high remoteness of his splendid dream had become
odious to him, and now his one desire was to escape from the
bookshop, out into the streets, as quickly as possible.
No sooner had Plattner taken over his manuscript and begun
the cast-off than he rose at once and, brushing aside the
printer’s expostulations, hurried out.
Once in the street, he walked more slowly, at a saunterer’s
pace. Basel lay before him with 'its great squares and gardens
and majestically rolling Rhine; with its abrupt contrasts of
light and shade, of tropical heat and sudden coolness ; with its
many fountains, at one of which he washed his sweat-soiled
hands. The city was ablaze with fervent sunlight ; the air heavy
with the pungent fumes of heated asphalt. As he climbed a
narrow street leading to the cathedral close, a thought came
to him of the Basel Congress of 1912. The Mtinsterplatz was
empty; not a carriage, not a human being was in sight. The
cathedral seemed to be shut up. Its red sandstone walls had
weathered to the hue of ancient pottery ; it brought to mind an
old, discarded terra-cotta reliquary, forlorn in sunlight, huge
and futile.
On the terrace overlooking the Rhine, under the chestnut-
trees, where the shadow of the apse and the swiftly flowing
750
AUGUST 5 TO 8
water below kept the air cool, Jacques was alone. Now and
again the merry cries of a swimming party, hidden by the
brushwood lining the river bank, were wafted up to him. For a
while he watched the pigeons fluttering amongst the trees.
Never since he came to Basel had he, the loneliest of men, felt
himself so utterly alone as now. And this sense of utter isolation,
of the dignity and power it conferred, filled him with rapture ;
it was a condition he would have abide with him from now on
to the end. Suddenly an unlooked-for thought waylaid him.
‘I’m acting as I’m doing only out of despair. To escape from
myself. I shan’t stop the war. I shan’t save anyone — except
myself That’s all ; this act of self-fulfilment will save me, but
me alone.’ He sprang up, trying to drive away the hateful
thought, clenching his fists. ‘Ah, but it’s something surely to
defeat them, to have overcome the world. And find escape, in
death.’
Beyond the red-stone parapet and the wide sweep of the river
between two bridges, beyond the spires and factory chimneys
of the outlying districts, lay fields and forests shimmering in
the heat-mist. That was Germany, the Germany of to-day, a
country under arms, already convulsed to its depths by the
catastrophe of war. He had a sudden impulse to walk west-
wards, to the point where the frontier marches with the Rhine,
where within a stone’s throw from the Swiss bank of the river
he could gaze at a foreshore and countryside that were German
territory.
Through the St. Alban district he made his way to the
suburbs. The sun was climbing zcnithwards across a haze of
dazzling light. The dapper little villas with their neatly clipped
hedges, arbours, swings, white tables spread with flowered
tablecloths, and green lawns with sprayers playing on them,
bore witness that war’s alarms had not disturbed the calm of
this small oasis, set in the midst of storm-racked Europe. At
Birsfelden, however, he saw a battalion of Swiss troops in field
service uniform marching down, singing, from the Hard.
To his right was a wooded hillside. A long avenue, parallel
with the river, ran through a grove of saplings ; the signpost
pointing up it was marked Waldhaus. On his left, between
751
SUMMER, 1914
the tree-trunks, he had glimpses of green, sunlit meadows
through which wound the Rhine. Jacques walked slowly, his
mind void of thoughts. After his cloistered life of the last few
days and, just now, his walk through sweltering city streets,
he found a wonderful appeasement in the cool green shadows
of the forest. Across a tracery of foliage, beyond a narrow
valley, he saw white walls gleaming through the trees. ‘That,’
he thought, ‘must be their Waldhaus.’’ A footpath leading down
to the water’s edge branched off the avenue. The nearness of
the water made the air cooler still. A moment later he was
standing on the river bank.
Yonder, separated from him only by that reach of limpid
light, was Germany.
Germany was empty. On that morning not one fisherman
was to be seen on the further bank ; not a peasant in the apple
orchards stretching from the riverside and the hamlet of red-
roofed cottages nestling round a spire, up to the foot of the
hills that compassed the horizon. But Jacques discerned,
hidden away near the water’s edge amidst the brushwood of
the shelving foreshore, the roof of a hut painted in stripes of
three colours. What was it? he wondered. A sentry-box? A
picquet-post? A customs-officer’s look-out?
His eyes were held by this foreign countryside, rife with
mysterious portents. His hands thrust deep into his pockets,
his feet sinking into the water-logged soil, he gazed long and
earnestly at Germany — and Europe. Never before had he felt
so calm, so lucid, so sure of himself as at this moment when,
alone on the bank of the great river fraught with historic
memories, he opened his eyes wide upon the world and his own
destiny. A day will come, he thought, surely a day will come
when at long last men’s hearts will beat in unison, all will be
equal in a world of dignity and justice. Perhaps it was needful
for humanity to pass yet once again through a phase of hatred
and brutality before winning through to universal brotherhood.
But for me there’s no more waiting possible; I’ve reached a
stage when I can no longer postpone the surrender of my life
wholly and finally. Have I ever given myself up wholly to
anyone or anything? No, not even to the revolutionary cause.
752
AUGUST 5 TO 8
Not even to Jenny. Always I kept back something, some vital
part of myself. Fve gone through life as a dilettante, a man of
half-measures, who grudgingly doles out only those portions
of himself that he is willing to surrender. Only now I’ve come
to know what it means, the utter self-immolation in which one’s
whole being is consumed.
Like a cleansing flame the vision of his sacrifice irradiated
him. Gone was the time when despair hovered in the back-
ground of his thoughts, when he had to struggle daily against
an impulse to give up the struggle. Death was no surrender,
but the fulfilment of his destiny
A sound of footsteps in the undergrowth behind him made
him turn his head. He saw a man and a woman, woodcutters,
both dressed in black. The man had a bill-hook slung on his
belt, the woman a basket in each hand. They had the rather
dour expression of most Swiss peasants, the frowning gaze and
close-set lips that seem affirming life is no primrose path. Both
shot a suspicious glance at the unknown young man they had
come on loitering in the brushwood and watching so intently
what was happening ‘over there.’
Jacques realized he had been unwise to venture so near the
frontier. Probably the river bank was being patrolled by
customs-officers, if not by Swiss troops as well. Beating a hasty
retreat, he cut across the bushes towards the highroad.
Late in the afternoon Jacques went to see Kappel, who had
made an appointment with him.
‘Wait for me in the garden,’ the medical student said to him.
‘The Chief will be coming at any moment for his evening
round. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’
The Children’s Hospital was a three-storey building beside
the river, laid out like a sanatorium with sun-terraces on which
the patients’ beds were set out in rows. It was surrounded by a
small garden with ivy-clad walls. Jacques sat down on a white
stone bench placed under a clump of trees. The silence round
him was broken only by the twittering of birds in the shrubbery
facing him and a ripple of young voices in the distance. Now
753
SUMMER, 1914
and then Jacques had a glimpse of a white, childish form, as a
little patient sat up in bed to greet the nurse on duty.
Steps crunched the gravel. Jacques looked round and saw
Kappel approaching. He had taken off his glasses and white
surgical jacket, and in a loosely fitting shirt and duck trousers
that showed his slim, lithe figure to advantage, looked unex-
pectedly boyish. His hair was a very pale yellow, his face thin,
his skin smooth, translucent. But his forehead was wrinkled
like an old man’s and there was a singularly mature look in the
keen blue eyes that belied his youthful build.
Kappel, who was a German, had never so much as thought
of returning to Germany from Basel where he was studying
medicine. In the daytime he worked under Professor Webb
at the ‘KinderspitaP ; his nights he gave up to the revolutionary
cause. He was a frequent visitor at Plattner’s bookshop, and
Plattner had commissioned him to translate Jacques’ pamphlet
into German, in one afternoon. He had not been informed of
Jacques’ plans, and refrained from putting questions about
them.
He took from his pocket four sheets of paper covered with
neat, angular German script. Jacques ran his eyes over them.
His hands were trembling. Should he speak, should he tell the
German of the wild hopes surging through his mind? No. The
hour for unbosoming himself to friendly ears was over ; he was
doomed to solitude and silence, the strong man’s lot. He folded
the sheets, saying merely :
‘Thanks.’
Discreetly Kappel changed the subject at once, drawing a
newspaper from his pocket.
‘What do you think of this? “At the Academy of Moral
Science M. Henri Bergson, the President, in the course of an
address voiced a tribute to the Belgian Corresponding Members
of the Society. This conflict with Germany, he said, is none
other than the conflict of Civilization with the hordes of
Barbarism.” Just imagine — Bergson !’
Abruptly he fell silent, as though to listen to some far-off
sound.
‘It’s too stupid! You’re not like that, are you? Every now
7H
AUGUST 5 TO 8
and then, especially at night, I seem to hear a sound of distant
booms, the guns in Alsace.’
Jacques averted his eyes. In Alsace ! Yes, the carnage had
set in already over there. His thoughts took a new turning. In
this hour when so many innocent men were passive victims, led
like sheep to the slaughter, he at least had the proud satis-
faction of remaining captain of his fate, of having chosen his
death — a death that would be at once an act of faith and a
rebel’s protest, his last defiance of a world gone mad, and a
deliberate achievement bearing his imprint, charged with the
exact message he had willed it to convey.
After a pause Kappel spoke again.
‘When I was a small boy we lived near the jail at Leipzig.
One snowy winter evening I heard my parents mention that
the executioner had come to town, and a man was to be
executed at dawn. I went out into the street without saying a
word. The snow lay thick and there was no one about. I kept
on walking round and round the prison, all by myself. I
couldn’t bring myself to go home. I couldn’t get out of my head
the thought that behind those walls was a man whom other
men had condemned to die, who knew it, and was waiting. . . ’
Some hours later Jacques was sitting in a corner of the
Kaffeehalle, leaning back on the cool tiles of an old-fashioned
stove as he dipped pieces of bread into the steaming bowl of
cafe au lait in front of him. He was in a brown study. The air
reeked with stale cigar-smoke. A shadeless electric bulb dang-
ling before him like a spider on its thread held his eyes dazzled,
hypnotized him, cut him off from all around him.
Plattner had pressed him to stay for supper; Jacques had
refused on the pretext of fatigue and, after correcting the proofs
of his manifesto, had left abruptly. He liked the bookseller and
blamed himself for feeling so unable to show his liking. But he
could not face another of those interminable palavers, inter-
spersed with the revolutionary cliches he had listened to ad
nauseam in Geneva. Moreover, Plattner’s conspiratorial airs —
his trick of constantly nipping his interlocutor’s arm with
755
SUMMER, 1914
claw-like fingers and suddenly letting his head droop over his
misshapen chest and finishing his sentences in a confidential
mumble — ^were more than Jacques’ nerves were capable just
now of standing.
The Kaffeehalle was exactly the place he wanted ; dark and
unpretentious, with big bare tables of worn deal that had
weathered to the hue and texture of brown bread. Sausages
and cabbage, soup, thick hunks of bread, were procurable at a
low price. Here, in default of solitude, Jacques found the next
best thing: isolation in the anonymous promiscuity of the
crowd.
For the Kaffeehalle was packed that night, as usual, with a
curious assortment of humanity. All sorts and conditions of
lonely souls, homeless bachelors, young men ‘at a loose end’
and vagabonds forgathered here. There were students, too,
noisy youths who made themselves at home, called the wait-
resses by their first names and fell to wrangling, as the mood
took them, over Kant’s philosophy, the Machine Age, prosti-
tution, bacteriology, the war. There were shopmen and office
clerks, neatly dressed people who were restrained from broach-
ing conversations with their neighbours by a Semi-bourgeois
shyness which, irksome though it was, they could not overcome.
There were sickly-looking folk whom it was harder to classify :
unemployed workmen, convalescents just out of hospital and
giving off a faint smell of iodoform, and victims of an infirmity
like the blind man seated near the door with a piano-tuner’s
outfit on his knees. At a round table in front of the counter
three Salvation Army lasses were having a vegetarian meal and
exchanging whispered but doubtless edifying confidences under
their poke-bonnets. And there were not a few human derelicts,
unhappy creatures stranded here on what ebb-tide of poverty,
crime or mischance none could tell. Only too glad for once to
have chairs to sit on, they crouched over their plates, as though
the burden of a trouble-laden past weighed on their shoulders,
and laboriously mashed their bread into the soup before
setting their spoons to it. They rarely dared to look up, but one
of them, the man who had just taken the seat in front of Jacques,
met his eyes for a moment. And in his gaze Jacques caught that
756
AUGUST 5 TO 8
fleeting gleam which is the secret countersign between the
outcasts of the earth : a subtle contact, as it were, of visual
waves, swift as a lightning-flash and transmitting always the
same question : Are you one of us — a castaway, a rebel, one
of life’s misfits?
A girl appeared in the doorway and took some steps into the
room. She was slim, walked with graceful ease and wore a
black tailor-made costume. She seemed to be looking for
someone, and unable to find him.
Jacques dropped his eyes. A sudden pang had stabbed his
heart. He rose abruptly, all eagerness to escape. . . .
Where was Jenny at this moment? How was she faring
without him, without even news of him except the card he had
posted to her at the French frontier? Often and often the
memory of her came to him thus, out of the blue, bringing a
spasm of wild regret, and in the fiery, sleepless nights he
strained her phantom hungrily to his breast. Each time the
thought of her need for him, of the precarious future to which he
had abandoned her, crossed his mind, it was unbearable. But
that thought came rarely. Never once had he so much as dallied
with the idea of saving his life for her sake. The sacrifice of his
love did not strike him as a betrayal ; rather, the truer he was
to himself, to the man that Jenny loved, the truer he felt to
his love for her.
Outside was darkness, solitude, an empty street. He strode
ahead at a quick pace, not knowing where he went, keeping
step with the strong, buoyant rhythm of the paean pulsing in
his heart. He had escaped from Jenny, from everything; he
was immune from all emotion but the fervent, purifying
exaltation of the hero.
757
SUMMER, 1914
58
Sunday^ August g
FINAL PREPARATIONS
His first task each day was to carry out an injunction
Meynestrel had given him. ‘Walk past No. 3, Jungstrasse,
every morning between eight and nine. When you see a piece
of red cloth at the window go to the house and ask for Frau
Hultz. Say to her, “I’ve come about the room you have
to let.” ’
On Sunday, August gth, as Jacques was turning the corner
from the Elsasserstrasse into the Jungstrasse, his heart missed
a beat. In full view amongst the tablecloths and napkins hung
out to dry on the verandah of Number 3 was a strip of bright
red cloth.
The street at this point was lined with cottages, each with a
small front garden. As he was going up the steps of Number 3,
the door slowly opened. In the dimly-lit hall he made out the
form of a fair-haired woman in a white, sleeveless blouse.
‘Frau Hultz?’ he asked, stepping inside.
Without replying she drew the door to behind him. The hall
was narrow, windowless.
‘I’ve come about the room you have to let.’
Quickly she slipped her hand inside her blouse, took out
something and handed it to him. It was a tiny spill of thin,
tightly-rolled notepaper, like the messages conveyed by carrier
pigeons. As he put it into his pocket Jacques could feel the paper
still warm from its contact with the woman’s breast.
‘Sorry,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.’
As she spoke she opened the front door. He tried to catch her
eye, but she was staring at the floor. He bowed and went out.
The door closed at once behind her.
Seven minutes later, bending with Plattner over a developing
dish, he deciphered the message.
758
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9
Information re operations in Alsace indicates prompt
action necessary. Have fixed Monday, August loth, for
our trip. Take-off at 4 a.m. During night of Sunday convey
leaflets to hilltop N.E. of Dittingen. Procure French
ordnance survey map. Draw line between the G in Burg
and D in Dittingen. Meeting-place is midway between
G and D on open plateau overlooking the railway line.
Look out for ’plane from nightfall on. If possible spread
white sheets on the ground to facilitate landing. Bring
twelve gallons petrol.
‘To-night !’ Jacques exclaimed, turning to Plattner. The only
emotion written on his face was that of surprise.
Plattner was a born conspirator. Though physically infirm
and prematurely aged by the sedentary life he led, he had a
fertile imagination, a gift for prompt decisions, all the qualities
that go to make a leader. A thirst for dangerous adventure had
always bulked as largely in his revolutionary zeal as actual
convictions.
‘We’ve thought it all over quite enough during the last two
days,’ he said at once. ‘There’s no question of making any
change in our plans. The thing now is to carry them out. Leave
it to me. You’d better be seen about as little as possible.’
‘What about the mo tor- van? Will you be able to have it by
this evening? And the driver? Who’s to let Kappel know?
There’ll have to be several of us, I should say, to load the
leaflets on to the ’plane without loss of time.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Plattner repeated. ‘I’ll see that everything’s
ready on time.’
Left to his own devices, Jacques could certainly have taken
the necessary steps as well as Plattner. But, after some days of
inactivity and solitude, and in his present state of physical
exhaustion, it was a relief to let the despotic little bookseller
have his way.
Plattner had his plans all set. Amongst the militant members
of his group there was a garage- keeper of Polish extraction who
he knew could be trusted. He jumped on to his bicycle at once,
leaving Jacques alone in the little bookshop gazing at the
developing-dish in which Meynestrel’s letter was still floating.
759
SUMMER, 1914
During the hour he sat there waiting, Jacques made no
movement. He had asked the bookseller for a copy of the
ordnance map, had unfolded it on his knees and located Burg
and Dettingen ; then suddenly all had gone blurred before his
eyes. The burden of his imaginings was so overpowering as
to make him incapable of coherent thought. For a week he had
been living in a dream, wrapped up in the task assigned him.
Only incidentally had he thought about himself and the fate
awaiting him. But now he was brought inexorably face to face
with the act that in a few hours he was to perform, the last
act of his life. Mechanically he repeated to himself the words :
To-night. To-morrow. Dawn. Behind them lay the thought:
To-morrow all will be over. For he knew there would be no
return. That Meynestrel would fly on till his petrol was used
up. What would happen then? The ’plane would be shot down
over the lines most likely; captured. For them, a court-martial,
French or German. No defence possible — summary execution.
In a flash of cruel lucidity, stiffening with dismay, he gripped
his forehead with both hands. ‘One life is all we have. To cast
it away is madness. No, it’s worse — a crime, the crime against
nature. Every act of heroism is absurd, and criminal.’
Suddenly a strange calm descended on him. The wave of
fear had spent itself And, in so doing, had swept him past a
gloomy headland, into sight of other shores and new horizons.
He saw the war cut short, perhaps ; mutinies and fraternization
followed by an armistice. ‘And even,’ he murmured, ‘if my
effort fails, what an example! Whatever happens, my death’s
an act, an act that will bring honour back again. I’ll have been
faithful unto death, and useful. Useful at last! I’ll have
redeemed my life, made up for all the wasted years. And found
the peace that passes understanding.’
His limbs relaxed, and now his whole being was pervaded
by a restful languor, a gentle glow of melancholy satisfaction.
At last he was going to lay down the burden, to have done with
this tiresome, disappointing world — with the tiresome, dis-
appointing being named Jacques Thibault. He could think of
his life without regret; of his life and of his death as well.
Without regret, but with a dull, almost brutish stupefaction
760
SUNDAY, AUGUST Q
SO overwhelming that he could not fix his mind on anything else.
Life . . . and Death.
Plattner found him seated at the same place, his elbows
resting on his knees and his head between his hands. He rose
mechanically, murmuring: ‘Ah, if only Socialism hadn’t played
false . . . !’
The garage-keeper, a man with greying hair and a calm,
resolute expression, had come with Plattner.
, ‘This is Andreyev. His van is ready. He’ll drive us. There’s
plenty of room for the leaflets and petrol at the back. Kappel’s
been warned and will be here in a few minutes. We’ll start as
soon as it’s getting dark.’
Jacques, however, whom the coming of the two men had
roused from his lethargy, insisted on reconnoitring the road
by*daylight. Andreyev approved.
‘Right! I will take you there,’ he said to Jacques. ‘I’ll go and
fetch my two-seater. Like that we’ll look as if we were out on
a joy-ride.’
Jacques turned to the bookseller.
‘But don’t the leaflets need stitching?’
‘Most have been stitched already. I’ll be through with the
rest in an hour or so. I promise they’ll be ready for you when
you’re back.’
Picking up the map, Jacques followed Andreyev out.
Plattner went down to his cellar and there, assisted by
Kappel, set about packing the leaflets in bundles. There were
four pages of written matter, two in French and two in German,
printed on extra-thin but tough paper.
Jacques had given instructions that the twelve hundred
thousand copies should be divided into batches of two thousand,
each batch wrapped with a thin paper band that could be
snapped with a flick of the finger. The total weight came to a
little over four hundred pounds. As directed by Jacques,
Plattner and Kappel next tied the batches together in packets
of ten ; each of these packets was attached with string tied in a
bow-knot that could be undone with a single hand. And to
facilitate the handling of these sixty packets Jacques had pro-
cured some large canvas sacks like mail-bags. Thus the entire
761
SUMMER, 1914
load was contained in six sacks, each weighing about eighty
pounds.
The Pole’s car returned at five. Jacques seemed extremely
anxious and upset.
‘Things look very black. I'he road through Metzerlen is
under surveillance. Hopeless. Sentries and customs-officers at
every turn. The other road, the one going through Laufen, is
all right up to Rbschenz. But from there on we should have to
take a country lane; there’s no getting a car up it. We shall
have to procure a farm-cart somehow or other. A cart and horse
are better anyhow; they can get through everywhere and
won’t attract attention.’
‘A cart and horse? That’s easy.’
Taking a notebook from his pocket, Plattner ran his eye
down a list of addresses ; then turned to Andreyev. ‘Come alohg.
You two,’ he added, turning to Jacques and Kappel, ‘stay here
and finish packing the sacks.’
He seemed so sure of himself that Jacques did not insist on
accompanying him.
‘I can fix up the last sacks,’ Kappel said to Jacques. ‘Have a
rest and try to sleep a bit. No?’ Taking Jacques’ wrist, he felt
the pulse. ‘You’ve a touch of fever. Have some quinine?’
When Jacques shook his head, he added: ‘Well, anyhow don’t
stay in this fuggy room. The stink of paste’s enough to make
one sick. Go out for a stroll.’
The Griefengasse was full of families in -their Sunday best
taking the air. Jacques joined the stream of passers-by. On
reaching the bridge he hesitated, then turned left along the
esplanade overlooking the river. I’m in luck for once! he
mused. What a gorgeous evening I He braced himself up, forcing
a smile to his lips. The great thing’s not to think, not to let
myself get ‘nervy’. . . . Let’s only hope they find a cart — and
everything turns out all right.
There was hardly anyone about. From the esplanade he
gazed down at the moving expanse of water crimsoned by the
sunset glow. Beside the towpath at the river’s edge a group of
bathers lay basking in the level rays, and Jacques paused for
some moments in rapt contemplation of the white forms softly
762
SUNDAY, AUGUST Q
gleaming on the grass. The evening air was full of an aching
languor. Jacques felt the tears rise to his eyes and, as he started
walking on again, memory lit up facets of the past. Maisons-
Laffitte, the banks of the Seine, swimming expeditions with
Daniel on bright summer afternoons.
By what paths, what devious ways, had fate led to this
journey’s end the boy that he had been? Had chance played a
major part in it? Assuredly not. All his acts hung together; so
much he felt convinced of, had always felt convinced of, con-
fusedly but staunchly. The whole course of his existence had
been imposed on him by some mysterious directive agency,
and though its compulsion had operated by fits and starts, each
phase of his career had followed an inevitable sequence. And
now his life had reached its climax — its apotheosis. Death
loomed before him glorious with the dying day’s effulgence.
He had passed beyond fear. Without vain heroics, with firm
resolve, joyless but vital and inspiring, he was answering the
call. This self-sought death was a fitting culmination of his life.
It was the condition of this last act of loyalty to himself, to his
instinct of revolt. From his childhood up he had said ‘No!’
It had been the only way he had ever had of asserting himself.
Not ‘No’ to life, but to the world. And now he was making
his last refusal, saying his last ‘No’ to what men had made of
life.
Without noticing where he was going, he had come to the
passage under the Wettstein bridge. Overhead passed a steady
stream of motor cars and trams — of living men. Before him lay
the cool green shadows of a little public garden, an oasis of
silence. He sat down on a bench. Footpaths ribboned the lawns
and shrubberies of box. Pigeons were cooing on the low branches
of a cedar-tree. A woman wearing a mauve apron was sitting
on the bench opposite him. Still quite young, she had a girlish
figure, but her face was careworn. In the perambulator in
front of her lay a baby, pasty-faced, almost hairless. The
woman was eating a slice of bread, gazing towards the river ;
with her left hand, frail as a child’s, she was absent-mindedly
rocking the baby-carriage, that creaked at every joint. The
mauve apron was faded, but clean; the slice of bread was
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SUMMER, 1914
buttered; the expression of the woman’s face placid, almost
contented. There was nothing to indicate extreme poverty;
yet somehow everything about her brought home so poignantly
the sufferings of an oppressed world that Jacques rose hastily
and fled.
Plattner had just returned to the bookshop. His eyes were
sparkling, he threw out his chest.
Tt’s all fixed up. I’ve got a covered cart. Nobody’ll see
what’s on it. And a good mare for Andreyev to drive. He used
to work on a farm in Poland and knows all about horses. It
means slower going, but we can be sure of getting there without
being held up.’
59
Sunday^ August g
THE MEETING ON THE HILL-TOP
Twelve chimes, midnight, sounded from the tower of the
Heiliggeistkirche. The market-gardener’s cart, that had crawled
at a snail’s pace through the empty streets of the southern
suburb, swung round into the main road leading to Aesch.
Under the thick tarpaulin, lashed down on all sides, it was
pitch dark. Plattner and Kappel, seated just behind the driver,
were chatting in undertones. Kappel was smoking; the red tip
of his cigarette scored the darkness now and again.
Jacques had wriggled his way to the back of the cart, and
was squatting between two sacks of leaflets, doubled up, his
arms locked round his knees, trying to quell the tumult of
his nerves by remaining quite still and keeping his eyes fast shut.
Plattner’s voice came faintly to his ears.
764
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9
‘Now, Kappel, old man, let’s think about ourselves for a
change. An aeroplane at this time of night is bound to attract
attention. It’ll be a ticklish job getting safely away, the three
of us, in our cart, without being held up and asked what the
devil we were up to. What’s your idea, Thibault?’ he added,
craning his neck towards the back of the vehicle.
Jacques made no reply. His sole concern was for Meynestrel’s
landing. As for what might befall the survivors down below —
that was outside his range.
Plattner’s loquacity, however, was not to be rebuffed.
‘The trouble is,’ he continued, ‘that even if we hide the cart
in the brushwood we can’t feel safe. No, the only thing is to
send Andreyev back with the cart before the ’plane shows up,
directly the stuff’s unloaded, so that he can reach the highroad
before daylight.’
But Jacques was lost again in dreams of the great adventure.
Leaning out of the cockpit, watching flurries of white pam-
phlets spinning down to earth, settling on fields and forests, on
troops standing-to for an attack. Shots are whizzing past them ;
Meynestrel swings round in the pilot’s seat, his face streaming
with blood, but smiling ironically as though to say: ‘You see,
Jacques, we bring them peace — and by the way of thanks
they’re plugging at us !’ The machine, one of its wings riddled
by gunfire, plunges earthwards. Will the papers mention the
crash? No, the Press is muzzled. Antoine will not hear of it.
Antoine will never know.
‘Well, what about us?’ Kappel broke in on his musings.
‘What about us? Why, the moment the ’plane’s loaded up,
we’ll make ourselves scarce, and get home ’cross country as
best we can.’
‘All right,’ Kappel said.
The cart seemed now to be travelling along a level patch of
road, for the mare had broken into a jog-trot. The body of the
cart perched on high springs and lightly loaded, rocked from
side to side ; the monotonous swaying motion and the darkness
were conducive to silence, to sleep. Kappel stubbed out his
cigarette and stretched his legs across the sacks.
‘Good night, all.’
765
SUMMER, 1914
After a moment, Plattner grunted :
‘Andreyev’s a damned fool. At the rate he’s driving, we’ll
get there much too early.’
As Kappel made no comment, Plattner turned to Jacques.
‘The longer we have to wait, the greater the risk of our being
spotted, don’t you agree? ... I say, are you asleep?’
Jacques had not heard a word. Another scene had taken
form before his mind’s eye. He saw himself standing alone in
a great hall, wearing the canvas uniform he used to wear at
the reformatory. In front of him, seated in a semicircle, were
the officers of the court martial. To them he spoke, holding
his head high and rapping out every syllable. ‘I know what is
in store for me, but I shall avail myself of the prisoner’s last
right. You shall not send me to the firing squad before you’ve
heard me out.’ The scene was the big medieval hall of a Law
Court, with an elaborately coffered ceiling, its panels picked
out with gold. The Presiding General was ensconced in a
throne-like chair in the centre of the court-room. He was none
other than M. Faisme, Superintendent of the Crouy Reform-
atory. He had volunteered for active service, presumably, and
been made a General forthwith. The little man was as dapper
as ever with his fair hair, plump, clean-shaven, well-powdered
cheeks, and spectacles that hid the expression of his eyes, and
cut a handsome figure in his black frogged dolman trimmed
with astrakhan. At a small table on a lower level were seated
side by side two old disabled ‘dug-outs,’ their tunics coruscating
with medals. They kept scribbling away without a moment’s
pause, their wooden legs stretched stiffly under the table. ‘I am
not attempting to justify my conduct. There is no need for
self-justification, when a man has acted according to his con-
science. But it is well that all who are present here should learn
the truth from one about to die.’ His fingers tightened on the
raihng clamped to the floor-boards in front of him. He had an
impression of tiers and tiers of seats behind him, crowded with
sightseers, like the arena of a bull-ring. Jenny was there too.
She was sitting all alone, pale, aloof, at the end of one of the
rows. She had on a mauve apron and there was a baby-carriage
in front of her. But he was careful not to look round. His words
766
SUNDAY, AUGUST Q
were not for her. Nor were they meant for the invisible multi-
tude whose eerie silence and rapt attention weighed like a
monstrous burden on his back. They were not even meant for
the row of officers staring intently at him. His words were solely
for the man who had so often humiliated him in the past. He
gazed fixedly at M. Faisme’s impassive face, yet somehow
never could catch his eye. He could not even feel sure that the
man’s eyes were open ; the flashing glasses and the shadow cast
by the cap-peak made it impossible to tell. How well Jacques
recalled the malignant gleams that used to flicker in the grey
depths of those pig-like eyes ! Yes, judging by the features’
statue-like repose, it seemed certain that the eyelids were fast
closed. Face to face with the Superintendent, how utterly alone
he felt ! Alone in the world, with only his dog for company, the
lame mongrel he had picked up in the Hamburg docks. If
only Antoine came along, he would force M. Faisme, somehow
or other, to open his eyes ! Yes, he was utterly alone, alone
against them all. All alike — generals, veteran colonels, the
nondescript crowd of onlookers, yes, and even Jenny herself —
all looked on him as an accused man, brought to book for his
misdeeds. The absurdity of it ! He was greater, truer to an ideal,
than any of these people claiming the right to sit in judgment
on him. He was facing up to the whole social system. He heard
his voice ringing through the silence of the audience-hall.
‘There is a higher law than yours ; the law of conscience. My
conscience speaks louder than all your rules and regulations.
I had the choice between a futile sacrifice of my life on your
battlefields, and a sacrifice of my life as a rebel fighting for the
freedom of the men you have hoodwinked. I have made my
choice ; I have accepted death — but not in your service. I die
because this is the only means you have left me of fighting to
the end for the one thing that still has value in my eyes — despite
your hymns of hate — the brotherhood of man.’ At the close of
each phrase the little handrail clamped to the floor trembled
in his grip. ‘I have made my choice. I know what is in store
for me.’ A sudden vision of the firing squad, their rifles levelled
at his breast, sent a shiver down his spine. In the front rank he
saw the faces of Pages and Jumelin. Raising his head he found
767
SUMMER, 1914
himself back in the court-martial room. The execution scene
had been so vivid that his face was still convulsed; somehow
he managed to twist the look of horror into a sardonic grin.
He gazed at each officer in turn. Then his eyes came back to
M. Faisme, and he stared at him intently, as he had used to
do at the Reformatory, trying with mingled apprehension and
bravado to detect what lay behind the Superintendent’s
ominous silence. In harsh, biting tones he addressed the Court
again. ‘Yes, I know what’s in store for me. But do you know
what’s in store for you, I wonder? You think yourselves the
stronger, do you? So you are — to-day. At a sign from you the
rifles will speak and you’ll be able to boast of having silenced
me for ever. But, merely by removing me, you won’t avert
what’s coming to you ! My message will outlive me. To-morrow
it will have consequences of which you do not dream to-day.
And even if my appeal finds no response, the nations you have
plunged into the shambles will wake up sooner or later to the
truth and come to their senses. When I am dead, there will rise
up against you in their thousands men like myself, armed with
the might of their consciences and the assurance of their
solidarity. For you have up against you and your criminal
social system something that is intrinsically human, vital, and
backed by the spiritual forces of mankind, and all your pains
and penalties cannot prevail against it. The march of time,
the progress of the world will break you in the end — ^infallibly !
International Socialism is forging ahead. I grant you it has
faltered on this occasion, and you have ruthlessly taken advan-
tage of its lapse. Yes, you have successfully put through your
mobilization. But, I warn you, have no illusions about this
triumph of a day! You will not turn back the rising tide, and
in the end, inevitably. Internationalism will sweep you away,
sweep you and all your like from the face of the earth. . . . Do
not hope to stem that tide with my dead body.’ He peered up
at M. Faisme’ s face; it was inscrutable as ever, like a blind
mask of wax, the lips faintly curled, with the enigmatic, smiling
aloofness of the Buddha. Jacques was trembling with rage.
Somehow, at all costs, he must shake that man, his enemy, out
of his bland indifference, force his attention if only for a
768
SUNDAY, AUGUST Q
moment! Suddenly he shouted furiously: ‘Monsieur Faisme,
look at me I Do you hear, sir I’
‘What’s up? Did you call me?’ Plattner’s voice.
At last the General’s eyes had opened. Their gaze was
soulless as the gaze a dying man in hospital meets in the eyes
of the professional ward-attendant going his rounds; eyes for
which the man in his last agony is already no more than
another corpse awaiting its turn for the mortuary. And suddenly
a hideous thought flashed through Jacques’ mind. ‘He’ll have
my poor dog shot as well.’ His eyes fell on the General’s orderly ;
it was Arthur, the warder who had made his life unbearable
at Crouy. ‘And it’s Arthur he’ll order to do it I’
‘What did you say?’ Plattner’s voice again.
As no answer came, Plattner reached across the darkness and
tapped Jacques’ leg. Jacques opened his eyes. But what he
first saw over his head was not the tarpaulin but the gilded
panels of the court-house ceiling. Gradually consciousness of
his surroundings came back to him. He was in a cart ; Plattner
was over there ; under his arm lay a sack of leaflets.
‘Did you say something to me?’ Plattner asked.
‘No.’
A silence followed. Presently the bookseller spoke again.
‘Laufen can’t be very far now.’
Then, abandoning his attempt to overcome Jacques’ stub-
born silence, he too fell silent.
Stretched on the floor of the cart, Kappel was sleeping like
a child. Every now and then Plattner sat up and peered
through a slit in the tarpaulin, trying to take his bearings. After
some minutes had gone by he whispered : ‘Laufen I’
It was 2 a.m. The cart moved through the deserted streets
at walking pace. Twenty more minutes passed, then suddenly
the mare stopped with a jerk.
Kappel gave a low cry of alarm.
‘What’s wrong? Why have we stopped?’
‘Ssh!’
They were just outside the village of Roschenz and about to
leave the valley road, turning off into a steep unmetalled hill-
track pitted with dry potholes. Andreyev had alighted. After
769
GC
SUMMER, 1914
blowing out the cart-lamps, he took the mare by the bridle
and began leading her up the track.
The cart lumbered uphill, shaken by violent jolts that made
the springs and the wooden hoops supporting the tarpaulin
creak incessantly. Jacques, Plattner and Kappel had all they
could do to keep the load of sacks from slipping to and fro. By
a paradox of memory the jolts and noises set a tune running in
Jacques’ head, a plaintive melody throbbing with wild regret,
that at first he did not recognize. Then it came to him. It was
the Chopin Etude Jenny played. Pictures rose before him of the
garden at Maisons-Lallite, of the drawing-room in Mme. de
Fontanin’s flat, of that afternoon, so recent yet now so remote,
when, at his instance, Jenny had seated herself at the piano.
After half an hour or so the cart stopped again. Andreyev
began unfastening the straps securing the tarpaulin.
‘We’re there.’
Silently the three others scrambled down from the cart.
It was only three o’clock and though the stars were shining,
the night was still quite dark. Only a faint glimmer in the East
heralded the daybreak.
Andreyev tethered the horse to the trunk of a small tree.
Plattner had fallen silent ; the self-confidence he flaunted in his
bookshop seemed to have forsaken him. He peered in all
directions into the darkness.
‘Where’s that famous plateau of yours? I can’t see a thing.’
‘Come!’ said Andreyev.
The four men climbed a steep wooded slope. Andreyev, who
was walking in front, halted when they reached the summit.
After taking breath, he laid a hand on Plattner’s shoulder, and,
pointing with the other arm into the darkness, said :
‘The trees stop just over there — you’ll see the place when it
gets less dark. It’s a sort of table-land. The fellow who chose
the place knew what he was about all right.’
‘And now,’ Kappel put in, ‘we’d better begin right away
unloading the cart, so that Andreyev can start back before it’s
light.’
‘Right you are.’ Jacques was surprised at the steadiness of
his own voice.
770
SUNDAY, AUGUST 0
All four came down the slope. Steep as was the rise between
the cart-track and the plateau, it took them only a few minutes
to carry all the sacks and petrol-tins to the summit.
‘When it’s a bit lighter,’ Jacques remarked, depositing a
bundle of white sheets beside him, ‘we’ll spread the sheets at
two or three points round the edge of the plateau to help him
to land.’
Plattner turned to the Pole, and said gruffly :
‘Off you go now, you and your rattle-trap !’
Andreyev remained standing where he was for some moments,
gazing at the three men. Then he took a step towards Jacques.
It was impossible to make out the expression on his face.
Impulsively, in a sudden rush of affection for this man whom
he would never see again, an emotion of which Andreyev would
never have an inkling, Jacques held out both hands towards
him, too deeply moved for speech. The Pole took his hands and
clasped them; then, bending forward, pressed his lips to
Jacques’ shoulder. . . .
They heard the sound of footsteps retreating down the
hillside. There was a sudden squeak of the axles as the cart
swung round; then a brief silence. Evidently Andreyev was
strapping the tarpaulin into place and seeing to the harness
before climbing back into his seat. At last the cart got under
way and little by little the rumble of wheels, the stridence of
creaking springs and the muffled thud of horse-hoofs on the
sandy soil, died away into the distance. Standing shoulder to
shoulder at the edge of the bluff, Plattner, Kappel and Jacques,
peered down into the darkness, in the direction of the receding
sounds. When silence had closed in again, Kappel was the first
to move. Turning towards the plateau, he stretched himself
flat on the ground. Plattner squatted down beside him.
Jacques remained standing. There was nothing more to be
done for the present, but to wait for dawn, the coming of the
’plane. And in this interval of forced inactivity, his obsession
mastered him again. What would he not have given to be alone
for these last moments of his life ! He moved a little distance
away from the others. Everything’s gone well so far, he thought.
Now all depends on Meynestrel. Mustn’t forget about the
771
SUMMER, 1914
sheets, as soon as there’s a little light. . . . The darkness was
throbbing with the small innumerable sounds of insects. A cool
night breeze fanned his sweat-dewed cheeks and body racked
with fever. Though he was dropping with fatigue, he kept
pacing restlessly this way and that on the dark plateau, stumb-
bling over hillocks, but always moving within hearing range
of Plattner and Kappel, whose whispered conversation came to
him across the gloom. At last, worn out by blind groping in
the darkness, he felt his legs give way beneath him and let
himself sink heavily to earth, closing his eyes. . . .
Thick as are the prison walls, he has recognized the light
footfalls sounding on the flagstones outside. Always he has felt
sure Jenny would find some means of entering this place, and
seeing him once again before the end. He has been waiting,
longing for her coming — yet now, preposterously, he resents it.
‘Leave me in peace! Why don’t they shut the doors?’ He
hammers on the wall to rouse the warder. Too late. He sees
her now across the bars. Coming nearer and nearer. Gliding
down a long white hospital corridor, a phantom form draped
in a black crape veil that she is not allowed to raise in his
presence. They have forbidden it. He stares at her, giving no
sign of welcome. He makes no effort to approach her; he will
have no more truck with anyone on earth. There is an iron
grating between them, but suddenly — without his knowing
how it came about — it has happened : he is fondhng a small,
tremulous, black-swathed head. Across the gauzy veil he
glimpses her pale, drawn face. She whispers: ‘Are you afraid?’
‘Yes.’ His teeth chattering so violently that he can hardly
speak, he adds: ‘Yes, but nobody will know it, nobody but
you.’ In a soft, surprised tone, a lilting voice that is not truly
hers, she says : ‘But — it’s the end . . . oblivion, peace.’ ‘Yes,
but you can’t understand. You don’t know what it means.’
Someone has entered the cell, behind him. He dares not look
round. A spasm contracts his shoulders. The world goes black.
He is blindfolded. Fists prod his back, urging him forward. A
gust of eager air chills the sweat on his brow. Presently he feels
grass underfoot. His eyes are still blindfolded, yet he distinctly
sees that he is being marched across the Plaimpalais Esplanade
772
SUNDAY, AUGUST Q
under military escort. Little he cares for the escort. He has no
thought left for anything or anyone. All that he is aware of is
the light dawn-wind on his brows, the soft caress of the night
that is passing and the rising sun. Tears are streaming down
his cheeks. He holds his head high, walking straight ahead.
His steps are firm but jerky, like those of a clockwork figure
when the spring is running down, for he has lost control of
his leg-muscles and the ground is pocked with holes that trip
him up at every step. No matter. He is moving ahead. The air
around him is murmurous with a low drone like the soughing
of the wind. Each step brings him nearer the goal. He lifts up
his hands in front of him as if they held a votive offering, some-
thing infinitely fragile that he must carry without stumbling
to the very end. Someone gives a sneering laugh behind his
back — ^is it Meynestrel? . . .
Slowly his eyes opened. In the blue dome above, the stars
were fading. The night was passing and in the East an irides-
cent sheen, dappled with glints of gold, flooded the horizon,
where a jagged mountain-range fretted the sky-line.
He had not the impression of waking up ; his nightmare had
passed out of his mind completely. His mind was crystal-clear,
limpid as the air after a thunder-shower. The time for action
was at hand. Meynestrel was on his way. Once more the phrase
from Chopin’s Etude echoed in his head, a melody of aching
sweetness like a subdued accompaniment to the rapid sequence
of his thoughts. ... A letter to her. Why not? I can give it to
Plattner to transmit. He took his notebook from his pocket
tore out a page, and, without seeing what he wrote, dashed
down:
Jenny, the one love of my life. My last thought is for you.
I might have given you years of deep affection. Instead of
that I have hurt you, wronged you, always. Yet I would
like you to keep a memory of me as . . .
A muffled thud, followed quickly by another, jarred the
ground beneath him. He stopped writing, puzzled. A series of
explosions in the distance was echoing in his ears, making itself
felt in the shocks transmitted to his body through the ground.
773
SUMMER, 1914
Suddenly he understood. The guns! Thrusting his notebook
into his pocket, he sprang to his feet. Plattner and Kappel were
already standing on the brow of the slope. Jacques ran up to
them.
‘The guns I The guns in Alsace !’
They stood side by side gazing fixedly, craning their necks,
in the direction of the sound. Yes, that was the war; it had
been waiting over there for the first ray of dawn, to break loose
again. In Basel they had caught no sound of it as yet.
And suddenly, as they were holding their breath to listen,
there came a different sound from far away, in the opposite
direction, a sound that swung them all three round towards it.
Their eyes met, questioning ; none dared as yet put a name to
the faint drone that was waxing louder every second. The guns
still were thudding in the distance, at regular intervals — but
they paid no heed. All three men were eye-raking the grey
southern horizon, buzzing now as with a swarm of hornets,
though nothing was visible as yet.
Suddenly, at the same moment, all their arms went up,
pointing; a black speck had risen above the Hoggerwald.
Meynestrel !
‘The landing-marks !’ Jacques cried.
Each picked up a sheet and started off at a run to a different
corner.
Jacques had the farthest way to go. Hugging to his breast
the folded sheet, he raced across the plateau, stumbling over
hummocks, picking himself up again. His one idea was to
reach the far edge of the landing-ground in time. He dared not
waste a moment looking up to watch the ’plane’s descent; he
only heard the drone swell to a deafening roar as it circled
overhead, then swooped down hke a huge bird of prey striking
to snatch him skywards.
774
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
60
Monday^ August lo
THE LAST ACT
A N icy wind lashed his face, filling his throat and nostrils
making him feel as if he were drowning — but he had no im-
pression of moving forward. All he felt was a succession of
violent lurches, as if he stood in the ‘concertina’ vestibule
between the coaches in an express train, and a terrific drum-
ming in his ears across the flaps of his helmet. When, after a
series of bumps on the rough ground, the ’plane had risen clear,
he had not even noticed it. All about him seethed a dense,
fleecy mist reeking with petrol-fumes. His eyes were open, but
his vision, like his mind, seemed bogged in a morass of viscous
whiteness. After a while he got back his breath; it needed
longer to adjust his nerves to the ear-racking din that hammered
on his brain and numbed it, making him feel as if electric
currents were tingling through his body to his feet and finger-
tips. Little by little, however, his mind began to work again,
to fill with thoughts and pictures. This time, anyhow, it was
no dream. He was strapped to his seat, his legs wedged between
the heaps of leaflets stacked around him. He straightened his
shoulders. Across the boiling cloud of vapour, under the grey
sweep of the wings, he glimpsed immediately in front of him
a helmeted head and shoulders, black on white like shadows
on a silver screen. And the sight of the Pilot filled his heart
with a wild jubilation. At last the great adventure had begun.
A paean of triumph, a hoarse, almost bestial cry, broke from
his lips and mingled with the roar of the gale. Had the Pilot
heard? His back remained steady as a rock.
Slewing himself round, Jacques leaned out. The wind rasped
his face, screeching past his ears like an adze on a whetstone.
As far as eye could reach an immense chequerwork of grey on
green lay spread below, like a colossal fresco laid flat and
775
SUMMER, 1914
viewed from a great height, a fresco fissured, flaking, weather-
stained and blotched with patches of dull colour. Or, rather
than a fresco, a geological map, the all but featureless map of
an unknown land with vast uncharted spaces. And suddenly it
came to him as an amazing thing that there below him at this
very moment Plattner and Kappel still went their earthbound
ways, living the creeping life of wingless insects. An access of
dizziness dimmed his sight. Drawing back his head, he closed
his smarting eyes. And in a flash he saw himself a child again ;
saw his father and Antoine and Gise and Daniel. And, as in a
misted mirror, Jenny in a white tennis costume walking under
the trees at Maisons-Laffitte. The vision faded. He opened his
eyes again. There was Meynestrel in front of him, his back
hunched, the cone of his helmet black against the mist. No, it
was no hallucination. At last his dream had come true. How it
had been done escaped his memory. From the moment he
had started spreading the sheet at a corner of the landing-
ground, the moment when he had ducked instinctively as the
winged monster swooped down on him, up to the wonderful
moment he was living through now, there was an almost
complete gap in his recollection. Only a few dim pictures had
stamped themselves on his mind, dreamlike scenes of vague
figures moving in a spectral dusk. He tried to piece the memories
together, and suddenly he saw again the form of Meynestrel
surging up gaunt and helmeted in the cockpit like a modern
Lucifer, and investing simultaneously with speech and meaning
this loud incursion from the skies. ‘Quick! The leaflets!’ Again
he saw men running to and fro on the dark hill-top, sacks
being tossed from hand to hand. And he remembered how
when, carrying a petrol-tin, he had scrambled up the side of
the machine, he had found the Pilot kneeling, electric torch
in hand, tightening a nut with a long spanner, and the Pilot
had looked round and said : ‘Bad contact. Where’s that
mechanic?’ ‘He’s gone back with the cart.’ Without a word
Meynestrel had bent forward again and resumed his task in
the bowels of the machine. But Jacques could remember
nothing of getting into the seat where he now was, or of being
Strapped in, or putting on the helmet he was wearing.
776
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
He wondered for a moment if the ’plane were really moving.
It gave the impression of being stationary, poised in a dome of
lambent light that echoed with the never-ceasing roar of the
engine.
Jacques turned round. The sun was immediately behind him,
just above the horizon. That meant they were travelling north-
west. Towards Altkirch and Thann, obviously. Again he shored
himself up and gazed down over the side. Wonder of wonders,
the mist had grown translucent; the ordnance map on which
he had worn his eyes out day after day lay spread beneath him
— sunlit, colourful, sparkling with life.
Thrilled by the sight, Jacques rested his chin on the metal
flange and took possession of this unknown world. A wide band
of milk-white radiance cut the landscape in two, seeming to
mark the course the ’plane was taking. That must be the valley
of the 111. In the midst of this milky way coiled a long lethargic
reptile, mottled here and there with silvery patches of mist;
that was the river. And what was that pale streak ribboning it
on the right? A road perhaps, the road to Altkirch. And, no
doubt, that filigree of slender lines like a network of veins and
arteries was made up of other roads, white on the misted green-
ness of the plain. And what was that black line which at first
he had not noticed, like a penstroke ruled with geometrical
precision across the landscape? The railway, presumably. His
whole being was focussed in that downward gaze. Now he
could distinguish clearly every fold and bastion of the hills that
flanked the valley. Here and there wisps of lazy vapour were
unfurling on the breeze, dwindling away, discovering vast new
spaces. That green boss yonder was a densely wooded hilltop.
And what was it coming into view, there on his left, through
a rift in the fleecy shroud? A town it must be, estraded on the
hillside, rose- red in the morning light, teeming with unseen life.
The nose of the ’plane had lifted. Jacques grew aware that
they were climbing in a sure, steady ascent that made his heart
beat faster. By now he had grown so used to the roar of the
engine that he could not do without it and let it seep into him,
thrilling him with a curious ecstasy. It had become the musical
counterpart of his exaltation, like a prodigious symphony
777 CG*
SUMMER, 1914
interpreting in terms of sound the wonder of this magic hour,
this soaring rush towards the climax of his days. Inner conflicts
and the clash of warring aims were over; he was dispensed
from willing, a free man at last. The rushing wind of speed, the
heady air of the great height, a blind assurance of success set
the blood wildly pulsing in his veins. Deep down within him he
felt his heart thudding in a rapid, even rhythm, like a human
accompaniment, a vital response of his being to the triumphal
anthem roaring up the sky.
Just then he noticed Meynestrel lean forward. He had done
so once before — to study the map presumably. Or perhaps to
get a better grip on the controls. Jacques watched the Pilot’s
movements with shining eyes. ‘What’s up?’ he cried light-
heartedly — but the distance between them and the din made
conversation impossible.
Meynestrel straightened up, then stooped again and re-
mained some minutes in that position. Jacques watched his
movements with interest. He could not see what the Pilot was
up to, but the heaving of his shoulders gave the impression that
he was tugging at some unseen object, perhaps using the long
spanner which he had seen in Meynestrel’s hands just before
they took off.
Anyhow there was nothing to worry about; the Pilot knew
his job. . . .
Suddenly there was a sort of concussion in the air, a violent
jar. What could it be? Jacques looked round wonderingly in
all directions; it took him some moments to grasp what had
happened. The jolt, the abrupt break of continuity, was merely
the shattering impact of silence, a silence dead and elemental
like the stillness of the interplanetary spaces, that had replaced
the roaring of the engine. But . . . why stop the engine now?
Meynestrel was standing up, it would seem, for his back
masked everything in front. Jacques kept his eyes fixed on the
unmoving back. Annoying, not to be able to talk to each other !
As if startled by the silence that had come on it, the ’plane
shivered for a moment in suspense, then suddenly began a swift,
slanting dive in a straight line, with the silken swish of an
arrow in flight. Why had Meynestrel cut off the engine?
778
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
Jacques wondered. Was he afraid they might be spotted by its
sound, or did he propose to land? Perhaps they were nearing
the front lines and it would soon be time to start broadcasting
the leaflets. Yes, that must be it. For quickly, without turning,
Meynestrel waved his left arm. Trembling with excitement,
Jacques reached out towards a bundle of leaflets. But, as he did
so, he lost his balance; the machine had given a lurch that
made the leather straps bite into his waist. What could be
happening? The machine was reeling forward in a nose-dive.
Was it intentional? A doubt crept into Jacques’ mind, a first
premonition of possible disaster. The blind confidence that
Meynestrel inspired in him was faltering. Gripping the edge of
the cockpit, he shored himself up, looked out. Horror of horrors !
The whole countryside was reeling, toppling over. Fields,
woods, meadows that a moment before had lain flat as a carpet
were crumpling, curling up in all directions like a colour-print
going up in flames. A storm-wind roared about his ears as the
world below leapt up towards him at dizzying, catastrophic
speed. With a violent lunge he managed to snap the belt
tethering him to his seat ; flung himself backwards.
The crash. All lost. . . .
No, by some miracle the ’plane had righted itself, come back
almost to the level. Meynestrel still had control, there was still
hope.
For a minute the machine drifted on, fluttering like a leaf on
the breeze. Then a series of violent eddies caught it, tossed it
this way and that, straining every joint. The fuselage creaked
heavily, the wings canted over. Was Meynestrel banking,
looking for a place to land? Crouching, Jacques gripped the
side of the ’plane with both hands, clawing at the metal rim
on which his nails could get no purchase. One last clear picture
stamped itself on his retina: a clump of pine-trees, a sunlit
meadow. Then instinctively he closed his eyes. His mind went
blank. A grip of steel closed on his heart. Time stopped and
stood still. Heralded by a blare of horns that split his ear-
drums, gigantic catherine-wheels lit up all around him, volleying
clots of flame, enveloping him in whirling light. He shouted.
‘Meynest. . . !’ A shattering blow landed on his jaw. His body
779
SUMMER, 1914
was thrown forward, flung, flattened out like a trowelful of
mortar tossed at a wall.
Intense heat. Flames, a reek of pungent smoke, flurries of
sparks. Daggers jabbing at his limbs, knives slashing his flesh.
Gasping for breath, he writhed and struggled, made super-
human efforts to force a way out of the welter of flames.
Impossible. His feet were welded to the bedplate of the furnace.
Two claws of steel gripped his shoulders from behind,
dragged him backwards. Every joint cracking, wrenched
asunder, he screamed with agony. Men were hauling him over
a rack of iron spikes, his body was being torn to shreds.
Suddenly the agony subsided in a great calm. A flood of
darkness. Oblivion.
61
Monday, August 10
THE FRENCH RETREAT IN ALSACE
Voices. Far-away sounds muffled by heavy curtains. Yet
the words forced their way imperiously into his consciousness.
Someone was talking to him. Meynestrel? Yes, that must be
Meynestrel’s voice. He struggled, made desperate eflTorts to
rouse himself from the deep coma numbing his mind.
‘Who are you? French? Swiss?’
Twinges of excruciating pain shot through his back, knees,
thighs. He was pinioned, nailed to the ground. His mouth was
a mass of raw wounds, his tongue so swollen he could hardly
breathe. Keeping his eyes shut, he slowly swayed his head this
side and that, bracing his shoulders in an attempt to rise.
Impossible. He fell back again with a stifled groan on to the
780
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
spikes lacerating his back. His throat and nostrils were filled
with petrol fumes and the reek of charred cloth. His mouth
began to dribble ; with a great effort he parted his lips and spat
out a small, round, pulpy blood-clot.
‘Speak up, man ! What’s your nationality? Were you on
reconnaissance ?’
The voice buzzed in his ears, fretting his torpor. For a
moment his eyelids opened, his wandering gaze rose from
depths of darkness. Overhead he saw a patch of sky, a tree-top.
Then a glimpse of dusty leggings, red trousers, a group of
French soldiers bending over him. . . . They had killed him
and were watching him die.
The leaflets? The ’plane?
Raising his head an inch or so, he peered between the
leggings. There was the ’plane. Some thirty yards away a
tangled mass of wreckage lay smouldering in the sunlight like
a dying pyre ; a heap of scrap-iron hung with streamers of burnt
canvas. Further away, deeply embedded in the ground, a wing
stood upended, gaunt and tattered as a scarecrow. The leaflets !
Not one would reach its goal. All were dead and buried in that
mound of ashes. An immense pity for their fate came over him
and, letting his head sink back, he gazed up dully at the sunlit
sky. But then his pain surged up again like vitriol eating
through his flesh down to the marrow of his bones. Nothing,
nothing mattered except that pain. Ah, let death come to him
— quickly, quickly!
‘Now then! Out with it! Are you a Frenchman? What the
hell were you up to in that machine?’
The voice dinned panting in his ears ; insistent but devoid of
harshness.
Opening his eyes, Jacques saw bending above him a young-
looking face, puffy with fatigue; two blue bespectacled eyes
under a k^pi with a blue cap-band. There was a confused
murmur of voices round him; he caught a phrase or two. ‘He
ain’t got back his senses yet, I tell you.’ ‘Have you let the
Captain know?’ ‘Won’t you go through his pockets, sir? He
may have some papei's on him.’ ‘Well, he had a near call, and
no mistake !’ ‘The doctor’s coming. Pasquin’s gone to fetch him.’
781
SUMMER, 1914
The man with the glasses had gone down on one knee. His
tunic was unbuttoned at the throat, his chin covered with
stubble, his chest criss-crossed with leather and canvas straps.
‘Don’t you understand French? Bist du Deutsch? Verslehst duT
A hand grasped his lacerated shoulder roughly. He gave a
low moan. The lieutenant promptly withdrew his hand.
‘Are you in pain? Like a drink of water?’
Jacques’ eyes fluttered in assent.
‘Anyhow he understood that,’ the officer remarked, rising
to his feet.
‘I’ll lay he’s a spy, sir.’
Jacques tried to turn his head in the direction of the man
with the high-pitched voice who had just spoken. But just then
some of the men beside him moved aside, exposing to view a
black object lying on the ground three yards away — a burnt,
unrecognizable thing with nothing human about it except the
arm doubled up on the grass. The charred fingers were shaped
like a bird’s talons — slim, sinewy fingers half-clenched on air.
Jacques could not take his eyes off them. Around him the
sound of voices seemed growing fainter.
‘Look, sir! There’s Pasquin coming back with the doctor.
Pasquin saw it all — he was on his way to the picquet-post with
the morning rations when they crashed. He says that the
’plane . . .’
The voice died out into the distance, muffled by heavy
curtains falling from the skies. Overhead the tree-top had gone
blurred. And very slowly the pain, too, died down, dwindling
to a nauseating languor. The leaflets, Meynestrel! Ah, to be
dead like him . . . !
For what inexplicable, compelling reason should he be lying
thus bound and helpless in a little boat, tossed on the waves?
Meynestrel had been wiser, he had flung himself overboard an
hour ago, when the storm on the lake had made the motion of
their little craft past all enduring. Like molten lead the sun-
beams seared his cheeks; there was no shelter anywhere from
their remorseless impact. In a vain effort to turn over he half
opened his eyes, but closed them again promptly; arrows of
gold had transfixed his pupils. The sharp-edged pebbles on
782
MONDAY, AUGUST lO
the bottom of the boat were tearing his back to shreds. He tried
to call to Meynestrel, but a red-hot cinder in his mouth was
burning through his tongue. There came a sudden shock,
jarring every nerve, sending ripples of bright pain across his
body. A wave had caught the boat and bumped it against the
pier. He opened his eyes. ‘Hey, Chinaware, want a drink?’
The speaker was a gendarme with an ill-shaven face like a
country cure’s. All round was a babble of gruff, uncouth voices.
He was suffering. Wounded. He must have had an accident.
Yes, a drink. The rim of a tin mug touched his burning lips.
‘Yes, mate, their rifles is a washout. But their machine-guns,
them’s the goods. And they got ’em all over the place, blast
their eyes!’ ‘I guess we got machine-guns, too, stowed away
somewhere. One of these days they’ll trot ’em out, just you
wait and see.’
Water ! Though he lay in the full glare of the August sun his
teeth chattered against the metal rim. His mouth was a mass
of ulcerating wounds. He gulped a draught of water that stuck
in his throat ; a thin stream trickled down his chin. He tried to
raise his arm. In vain ; his wrists were shackled, and tied to the
sides of the stretcher. He wanted to drink again, but the hand
holding the mug had moved away. Suddenly it all came back
to him. The ’plane, the roaring flames, Meynestrel’s charred
fingers, the holocaust of the leaflets. His eyes were smarting
with the glare, with tears and dust and sweat. He closed them
again. More water. No. Pain, all-compelling pain. Nothing
mattered now except his pain. ... A babel of voices round him
made him open his eyes.
He was in the midst of a crowd of men in draggled uniforms,
their shirts gaping, their hair matted with sweat, bawling at
each other, bustling to and fro. He lay on a stretcher set down
on the grass beside a road swarming with troops. A long train
of mule-carts was creaking past, raising clouds of dust. On the
side-path some gendarmes were passing round a soldier’s
water-bottle that glinted in the light as they tilted it above
their mouths and drank without letting the rim touch their lips.
Pyramids of piled arms and dumps of haversacks lined the road
as far as eye could reach. Groups of men sprawling on the
783
SUMMER, 1914
grassy banks were smoking, arguing, gesticulating. The most
exhausted were lying on their backs, their arms folded over
their eyes, sound asleep in the full blaze of the sun. Ah, if only
he could drink ! Every part of him was throbbing with pain ; his
mouth, his back, his legs. Now and again a feverish shiver ran
down his spine, drawing from him a low moan. But the lancin-
ating twinges he had felt shooting through his body just after
the crash had ceased. Presumably he had been given medical
attention, his wounds had been dressed. A wild idea flashed
through the twilight of his mind; his legs had been amputated.
. . . What could that matter, now? But the idea would not
leave him. Could he feel his legs? No, there was no sensation
left in that part of his body. Somehow he must find out. Strap-
ped down as he was to the stretcher he could do no more than
raise his head a little, enough to have a glimpse of his blood-
stained hands, and his legs protruding from the trousers that
had been cut off just below his thighs. Evidently he had not
been amputated. His legs were swathed in bandages and, from
the knees down, set in splints. The splints consisted of strips of
wood that had obviously been taken from some packing-case,
for one of them still bore a black stencilled inscription : China-
ware. With Care. Exhausted, he let his head sink back on
to the stretcher.
Voices all around him. A rumour of voices; soldiers’ talk.
‘A chap in the Hussars told us the regiment was falling in
behind those trees.’ ‘The hell he did ! I say : Let’s keep with the
column. At the first halt they’ll tell us where to go.’ ‘Where
have you boys come from?’ ‘How d’you expect us to know the
names? We’ve come from over there. What about you?’ ‘Same
here. And I can tell you we’ve been having a god-awful time
ever since last Friday.’ ‘We been through it, too.’ ‘Don’t know
about you chaps, but as for us it’s simple : since the push
started — that’s three days ago, ain’t it, Friday, the seventh —
we haven’t had six hours’ sleep all told. Ain’t that so, Maillard?
And no grub, neither. On Saturday they issued a spot o’
rations, but since the Jerries got us on the hop, damn’ all to
eat. Supplies broken down, they say. Lucky for us we managed
to scrounge a bit in the villages.’ Other voices, further oflT,
784
MONDAY, AUGUST lO
hoarse with anger. ‘And I tell you, we’re not through with it
yet, not by a long chalk!’ ‘Aye, they’ve got us by the short
hairs, good and proper. Ain’t that so, Chabaux? And if we try
another push, we’ll take it in the neck again.’
Most painful of all, perhaps, were the wounds in his mouth,
which prevented him from swallowing his saliva, from speaking
or drinking, almost from breathing. Gingerly he tried to move
his tongue. From deep down in his throat welled up a nauseat-
ing taste of petrol and burnt varnish.
‘And then, you know, all those nights out of doors, on patrol,
they get a man down. When the battalion advanced on
Carspach. . . .’
Yes, it must be his tongue that was injured ; it was swollen,
raw, in shreds. A fragment of wreckage must have hit him in
the face, or else he had been thrown forward on to his chin.
Still, the pain was inside his mouth. He applied his mind to the
problem. ‘I must have bitten my tongue,’ he concluded at last.
The strain of concentrating had exhausted him ; a fit of giddi-
ness made him close his eyes. At once flames leapt up before
them, and the twinges in his legs set in again. With a faint
moan he relapsed into a state of coma, a respite of no
thoughts.
‘Burnt all over . . . legs fair torn to pieces ... a spy.’
He opened his eyes. The gendarmes had come up to have a
look and the stretcher and a group had gathered.
‘Their ’plane crashed?’ ‘Yes, a “Taube.” Bricard saw it.’
‘BricatP’ ‘No, Bricard, that tall N.C.O. in Number Five Com-
pany.’ ‘Burnt out it was, their ’plane.’ ‘Well, that’s one bloody
“Taube” out of the way anyhow.’ ‘That chap, “Chinaware”
we call him, was in luck. His legs are in a nasty mess but the
Doc says he’ll pull through.’ He had heard the voice before;
looking round, he saw the elderly gendarme with the pale
eyes, bald head and air of a country parson, who had given
him a drink. ‘The hell he will !’ The speaker was another
gendarme, a swarthy, thick-set little man with darkly glowing
eyes, who looked like a Corsican. ‘Hear that, sir? Marjoulat
says Chinaware’s out of danger. Not for long, though.’ The
Police Sergeant grinned. ‘Aye, Paoli, you’re right there. Not
785
SUMMER, 1914
for long. Xhe firing squad’ll see to that. He was a big burly
man with a jet-black beard and cheeks the colour of raw meat.
The stripes on his sleeve were brand-new. ‘Then why the devil
didn’t they shoot him out of hand, the scum?’ a soldier asked.
The Sergeant made no reply. ‘Got to take him far like that?’
‘We’ve been told to hand the bastard over at Brigade Head-
quarters,’ the Corsican explained. The Sergeant scowled and
looked away, then grunted in an officious tone ; ‘We’re waiting
for orders. A regimental sergeant let off a high-pitched cackle.
‘Waiting for orders, are you? What price us? We’ve been
waiting for orders for the last two days, we have.’ ‘Waiting for
our rations, too.’ ‘What a bloody mess !’ ‘There’s no battalion
runners left, they say. The Colonel can’t get orders through
nohow.’ A peremptory whistle cut the conversations short.
‘Unpile arms ! We’re moving on.’ ‘Put on packs ! Jump to it,
there ! Fall in !’
There was a general commotion as the men ran to their
places and the column got under way again. Jacques felt him-
self sinking into an abyss of darkness. Water was lapping round
the boat. A great wave lifted it, rocked it for a moment, then
swept it forward.
‘On the right, close!’ ‘What’s up now?’ ‘Close up there!
Don’t straggle !’ The jolts made him open his eyes. A broad
back loomed before them ; the gendarme holding the front poles
of the stretcher.
A ripple went down the column as it opened out to pass
round a dead mule lying in the middle of the road, its belly
hideously distended, legs in air. The men hawked, sickened by
the stench, and flapped their hands against the swarm of flies
that rose from the carcase, buzzing round their faces. Then the
ranks fell back into line ; as they picked up the step again, the
clank of hob-nailed boots on the hard road resumed its ponder-
ous rhythm.
What time was it? Sunbeams fell vertically, scorching his
cheeks. His body ached with pain. Probably ten or eleven.
Where were they taking him? It was impossible to see more
than a few yards ahead. A train of regimental waggons was
lumbering past at walking pace, raising a dense cloud of dust
786
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
fetid with the mingled stench of horse-dung, hot leather, sodden
wool and sweating bodies. All his strength had been drained
out of him by pain ; he was too weak to think, to shake off the
torpor of his mind. The acrid dust was stinging his throat, his
gums were parched with thirst and fever. He was a helpless
atom, lost in this mass of marching men ; forlorn, alone, bereft
of all, of life and death alike. During his rare spells of lucidity,
between the periods of unconsciousness and nightmare hallucin-
ations, he repeated to himself incessantly the one word
‘Courage !’ Now and again the files closed in so densely round
the stretcher that his whole range of vision was filled with
heaving shoulders and rifle-barrels glinting in the turbid air,
and he pictured himself in the midst of a great forest moving
tumultuously forward. Mechanically his eyes fixed themselves
on a big knapsack swaying like a pendulum on a man’s back,
then on a bright tin mug that hung from a canteen enclosed in
a blue cotton cover. A good many men had loosened the straps
and let their packs down almost to their waists. Their shoulders
were bowed, their faces grimed with sweat-sodden dust. Some-
times Jacques caught one of them eyeing him with a curious
unfocussed stare, at once attentive and unmindful, disconcerting
in its strange remoteness.
On and on they trudged, straight forward, shoulder to
shoulder, seeing nothing, saying nothing, staggering now and
then but never halting in the retreat to safety; wearing down
their strength on the straight, stony road as on a grindstone.
To Jacques’ right was a tall, gaunt soldier with a cameo- like
profile ; he wore a Red Cross armlet and walked with gravely
measured strides, his head uplifted and on his face the rapt
expression of a man in prayer. On the left of the stretcher was
an undersized little man who picked his way, limping a little.
Jacques’ gaze settled dully on the limb that always paused an
instant before coming forward and sagged at the knees with
every step. Sometimes when an eddy in the ranks made an
opening beside him Jacques had a glimpse of trees and hedges,
a radiant countryside. He had a dreamlike impression of having
seen a little way back a grey farmhouse with shuttered windows,
a mud-walled barn, a farmyard with a dunghill and chickens
787
SUMMER, 1914
pecking at it; the warm, pungent odour of the manure had
been wafted to his nostrils. Had it really existed, or was it a
figment of his fuddled brain? As the stretcher swayed from side
to side, twinges shot through his legs and the pain in his mouth
blazed up again. If only that gendarme would have the idea of
giving him some more water! At every moment progress was
held up by sudden halts, after which the stretcher-bearers had
to double, panting, and catch up the ranks in front when a new
start was made, before the cart-drivers took advantage of the
gap to force their way into the column. ‘It’s a shocking muddle
and no mistake 1 I’d like to know why everybody’s using the
same road.’ ‘The same road — not a bit of it, mate ! Why, all
the roads round here is cluttered up the same as this, most
likely. When a whole division’s retreating, what else can you
expect?’ ‘A division? It’s the whole Seventh Army Corps, so
I was told.’
‘Hey you there, what the hell are you up to?’ ‘Gone dippy,
have you^’ ‘Stop it, you fool I’ A man in territorial uniform had
cut across the road, against the advancing stream, and was
heading eastwards, towards the enemy. Paying no heed to the
others’ shouts, he threaded his way between the transport-
waggons. He was no longer young ; his beard was grey and not
with dust alone. He carried no rifle or pack, and wore a military
greatcoat over peasant’s corduroys. A bunch of miscellaneous
equipment flapped at his waist: bandoliers, a water-bottle,
several haversacks. ‘Hi, Daddy, where d’you think you’re off
to?’ He dodged the arms thrust forth to stop him. His face was
haggard, his eyes were wild and resolute and his lips fluttered
as though he were conversing with a ghost in whispers. ‘Going
home, old boy?’ ‘Good luck I’ ‘Send us a picture-postcard when
you get there!’ Without looking round, without a word, the
man strode ahead, chmbed over a heap of stones, crossed the
ditch, forced his way through the hedge into the fields beyond,
and vanished.
‘I say! Look at that! Boats!’ ‘On the road?’ ‘What the
hell . . . ?’ ‘It’s the pontoon party retiring.’ ‘They’ve cut across
the column.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Yes, look! Boats on wheels! Did you
ever see the like ?’ ‘Looks to me, sonny, as if we’d given up the
788
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
idea of crossing the Rhine.’ ‘Close up there ! Carry on !’ The
column got under way again.
Five hundred yards on, another halt. ‘What’s up now?’
This time the halt persisted. The road was spanned by a level
crossing, and a train composed of empty carriages was crawling
by, drawn by a panting, groaning little locomotive. The
gendarmes set down the stretcher in the dust. ‘Looks like
things are going badly for us,’ Marjoulat remarked with a
whinnying laugh, ‘if they’re moving back the rolling stock.’
The Sergeant glowered at the train, mopping his face, and made
no reply.
‘Hoho !’ chuckled the little Corsican. ‘Old Maijoulat’s
bucked up no end, ain’t he, since we started falling back!’
‘Marjoulat,’ remarked a third gendarme, a bull-necked, strongly
built man who had seated himself on a stone-heap and was
munching a slice of bread, ‘Marjoulat went a bit green in the
gills, I noticed, when we were under fire the day before yester-
day.’ Marjoulat went crimson. He had large grey eyes, a
prominent nose and beetling brows, and habitually wore an
expression of sullen obstinacy tempered by a furtive slyness ;
it was the typical face of a shrewd, calculating peasant. He
turned towards the Police Sergeant, whose eyes were fixed
on him.
‘I ain’t ashamed to say it, Sarge. War don’t suit me nohow; I
ain’t no Corsican and I’ve never been one for fighting.’
But the Sergeant was not listening ; his attention was directed
to the level crossing. Across the rumble of the train there
sounded a drumming of horse-hoofs. A group of mounted men
came trotting up beside the railway-line. ‘It’s a patrol.’ ‘No,
it’s the Staff.’ ‘Bringing orders, most likely.’ ‘Stand back there,
damn you!’ The troop consisted of a cavalry captain, two
N.C.O.s and some lancers. The horses picked their way
between the waggons and the troops, swung round the stretcher,
formed up on the far side of the road and galloped across
country, westwards. ‘Them chaps have all the luck.’ ‘Don’t
you believe it ! They say the cavalry division’s been told off to
cover our retreat. Those poor devils are going to get it in the
neck, keeping the Germans off our rear.’
789
SUMMER, 1914
Round the stretcher some men were engaged in conversation.
Their tunics were open at the throat and on each sweating
chest there dangled from a black cord the man’s identity disk.
There was no way of distinguishing their ages ; all alike had
dust-stained, wizened faces; all looked old men. ‘Any water
left?’ ‘Not a drop,’ ‘Zepps? Yes, we saw one on the night of
the seventh flying low over the woods.’ ‘What’s that you say?
We ain’t retreating? Tell us another!’ ‘It’s the gospel truth.
One of the Brigade runners heard a Staff Officer explaining it
to the Old Man. We’re not retreating, he said,’ ‘No. It’s what
they call a strategical withdrawal. To get all set for a counter-
offensive, It’s a mighty fine idea. We shall nip them in a pair
of pincers.’ ‘In a what?’ ‘A pair of pincers, he said. Ask the
C.S.M. about it, he knows. It means letting ’em advance till
their up to the neck in it, then you close the pincers — zip! —
and you’ve got ’em cold. See the idea?’ ‘Look! There’s a
“Taube.” ’ ‘Where?’ ‘Over there. Just above that hayrick.’
‘Forward!’ ‘That’s a “Taube,” Sergeant,’ ‘Forward! There’s
the guard’s van passing, the crossing’s clear.’ ‘How do you
know it’s a “Taube”?’ ‘Can’t you see? We’re pooping off at
it.’ Round the tiny speck of brightness in the zenith, puffs of
smoke were leaping into view ; they hovered for a moment like
suspended snowballs before dissolving on the breeze. ‘Fall in
there! By the right! Forward!’ The tail of the train was dis-
appearing round a bend.
A general commotion. The sudden jolts sent waves of agony
through him. Courage ! In a last moment of lucidity he listened
to the heavy breathing of the stretcher-bearer behind his head.
Then all went blurred; a fit of giddiness came over him.
Courage! Like the red-and-blue horses of a roundabout the
marching files flickered in dizzy circles through the dust and
glare. He groaned. Delicate, sinewy fingers, Meynestrel’s,
blackened, shrivelled up, shrank to a bird’s charred claws. The
leaflets ! All burnt ! All hope lost. Ah, to die, to die !
The blare of a motor-horn. He opened his eyes. The column
had halted just outside a little town. A car was coming up from
behind, hooting loudly. The men retreated to the sides of the
road to make way for it. The Sergeant sprang to attention and
790
MONDAY, AUGUST lO
saluted. It was an open car flying a flag and packed with
oflicers. At the back glinted the gold lace of a general’s kepi.
Jacques closed his eyes, and again the scene of the court-martial
rose before him. He was standing in the centre of the court-
room confronting that general with the braided cap — M.
Faisme. The car was hooting continuously. The mist closed in
again. When he opened his eyes once more he saw a neatly
clipped hedge, a lawn, clumps of geraniums, a villa with
striped Venetian blinds. Maisons-Laflitte. A white flag with a
red cross floated above the gateway. Drawn up in front of the
steps was an ambulance car riddled with bullets, all its windows
splintered. The column marched past it, then halted once more.
The stretcher was dumped roughly down on the roadside.
Now at every stop the men, instead of keeping their ranks,
flung themselves down on the ground, without discarding
haversacks or rifles, and lay supine, as if incapable of ever
rising again.
The town was some two hundred yards away. ‘Looks as if
we were going to halt there,’ the Sergeant remarked.
Another move forward. ‘Fall in there!’ After advancing fifty
yards the column halted again.
A jerk. What was happening now? The sun was still high and
blazing hot. How many hours, how many days had it lasted,
this never-ending march? He was in pain. The blood oozing
into his throat gave his saliva an acrid taste. The horse-flies
swarming round the mules kept settling on his lips and hands.
A lad from the town started talking to a group of soldiers
who had gathered round him ; his eyes were sparkling. ‘They’ve
been locked up in the Mayor’s cellar,’ he grinned. ‘Three
German prisoners. Sick as hell they look! You can see ’em
behind the grating. They’ve faces just like weasels. The folk
here say they collar all the kids they can and chop their hands
off. One of ’em was led out to piss. We tried to tear his guts
out, we did, only the sentry wouldn’t let us.’ The Police Sergeant
called to the youngster. ‘Any wine left in your place?’ ‘Sure!
Lots of it.’ ‘Here’s a franc. Go and fetch a bottle.’ ‘You won’t
never see that kid again,’ Marjoulat predicted sagely. ‘Fall in!
Forward!’ Another fifty yards’ advance brought them to a
791
SUMMER, 1914
cross-roads where a cavalry troop had just dismounted. To the
right, on a big railed-ofF common, a fair-ground by the look of
it, some N.C.O.s had mustered what remained of an infantry
company. In the centre a captain was haranguing his men.
Then the ranks fell out. Beside a haystack a field-kitchen was
dispensing soup. The air was loud with shouts, the clink of
tin canteens and a buzz of voices like a hornets’ nest. The lad
came back again, waving a bottle. ‘Here’s your booze,’ he said
with a grin. ‘Seventy centimes they took for it, the sharks !’
Jacques opened his eyes again. The bottle was misted as if
it had been on ice. He gazed at it eagerly; the mere sight of
the bottle had filled him with a frantic thirst. The gendarmes
had gathered round their Sergeant, who was fondling the
bottle as if to relish its cool contact before beginning to drink.
He took his time. Then, planting his feet well apart, he took
a steady purchase on his legs and, before setting the bottle to
his lips, cleared his throat and spat. After drinking he beamed
on the company, then passed the bottle to Marjoulat, next in
seniority. Would Marjoulat think of Jacques? No, he drank
and handed the bottle to Paoli, whose nostrils were quivering
like a thirsty animal’s. Jacques slowly dropped his eyelids so
as to see no more. . . .
Voices round him. He shot a glance at the newcomers. Some
N.C.O.s from the troop halted at the cross-roads had come
over to have a chat with the infantrymen. ‘We’re the Light
Brigade. We went into action with the Seventh Army Corps
on the seventh. Our job was to smash through to Thann, then
wheel round along the Rhine bank and cut the bridges. But we
were in too much of a hurry. It didn’t pan out the way they’d
reckoned on. The poor bloody infantry were walked off their
feet, even our horses were done in. So we had to fall back.’
‘The usual bloody muddle !’ ‘Muddle ! It’s nothing here to what
it is up north where we’ve come from. I never saw such a sight.
The roads are chock-a-block; there’s not only tlie troops but
the villagers who’ve got the wind up and are scuttling for all
they’re worth.’ ‘We,’ an infantry sergeant put in, in a deep,
resonant voice, ‘we were the advanced guard. We reached
Altkirch just as it was getting dark.’ ‘On the eighth?’ ‘Yes,
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MONDAY, AUGUST 10
Saturday, the day before yesterday,’ ‘We were there, too. The
infantry put up a fine show, there’s no denying. Altkirch was
stiff with squareheads. Well, in less time than no we’d mopped
’em all up with fixed bayonets. And what’s more, we kept ’em
on the run right up to Walheim.’ ‘Our mob got as far as
Tagolsheim.’ ‘And next day the road was clear in front of us.
Not a Boche between us and Mulhausen. We were beginning
to think there’d be no stopping us all the way to Berlin. But
the dirty dogs, they knew very well what they were up to,
letting us go ahead like that. Ever since yesterday they’ve been
counter-attacking. Seems we’re having a rough house over
there.’ ‘Anyhow it’s a bit of luck, our being ordered to retire.
Else we’d all have been blown to bits by now.’ An infantry
C.S.M. and some sergeants had joined the group. The sergeant-
major, a red-cheeked man with bloodshot eyes, began speaking
in a jerky voice. ‘We were in action for thirteen hours on end.
Isn’t that so, Rocher? Thirteen solid hours ! The Germans were
in a pinewood in front of us. God ! I shan’t forget that pinewood
in a hurry. There was no way of driving them out of it. So our
company was ordered to work round the wood and turn their
flank. We wriggled along on our bellies for the best part of a
mile ; it took us two or three hours to cover the distance to the
farmhouse we were to occupy. Me, I’m a cashier in civil life
and I’m out of training for that sort of stunt. Still, we got to
the farm all right. The family were all down in the cellar — the
women and kids, poor things, howling with fright. We locked
the cellar door on them; you never know with Alsatians. We
bored loopholes in the walls. Then we went up to the second
floor and bunged up the windows with mattresses. We’d only
one machine-gun, but lashings of ammunition. Well, we held that
farm for a whole day. “Sacrificed” — that’s what the Colonel
said we’d been. All the same we managed to get back, some of
us. It’s unbelievable what one manages to do once one’s up
against it. Still, when we got word to retire, we didn’t wait to
be told twice, I can tell you. There were two hundred of us
when we started out of the wood. When we left the farmhouse
we were sixty all told, and of those sixty twenty men were
wounded. And yet. believe me or not, it’s not so terrible as it
793
SUMMER, 1914
sounds. It’s not so terrible because a man loses track of what
he’s doing. Everybody gets that way, officers and men alike.
You don’t see anything. You don’t understand a thing. You
just take cover and plug away. You don’t see your mates
falling. There was a fellow hit just beside me, his blood spurted
over my face. He screamed. “I’ve copped one ! ’ That was all.
I can hear his voice still — but I don’t even know who it was.
Never stopped to look. One keeps on firing, yelling, firing,
yelling, till one goes sort of daft. Isn’t that so, Rocher?’ ‘Aye,
but don’t forget one thing,’ said Rocher glaring at the men
around him. ‘Them Fritzes, as compared with our lot, are just
a wash-out.’ ‘Look, sir!’ a gendarme shouted. ‘The column’s
started off again.’ ‘What s that? Fall in, then !’ The N.C.O.s
scuttled back to their places. ‘Close in there ! Close in ! By the
right ! Forward I’ ‘Cheero !’ said the Police Sergeant as he
walked past the cavalrymen, ‘and good luck to you.’
There were no more halts before the column had entered
the little town, filling the narrow street with a herd-like rumble
of trampling feet. The pace was slower and Jacques felt less
pain, now that the lurching of the stretcher had diminished.
He looked about him. Houses. Journey’s end at last?
The townsfolk were standing at their doorways in groups :
elderly men, women with babies in their arms, children clinging
to their mothers’ skirts. For hours on end, perhaps ever since
daybreak, they had been standing thus, craning their necks,
half blinded by the dust and glare, watching with anxious eyes
the never-ending stream of men and vehicles pouring down the
street : transport waggons, ambulance sections, artillery trains,
footsore regiments — all the impressive ‘covering army’ they had
seen some days before advancing in good order towards the
frontier, and that now was returning in a disorderly retreat,
leaving them to the invader’s mercy. The choking dust-cloud
welling up into the sunlight brought to mind a housebreaker’s
yard in full activity. Street, paths and backyards were buzzing
like hives of angry bees. The shops were packed with soldiers
making a clean sweep of all the drinkables and foodstuff. The
church square was occupied by army-waggons and troops. On
the right, where there was a little shade, was a cavalry squadron ;
794
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
the men had dismounted and were holding their horses by the
bridles. A cavalry major in a blazing temper was vigorously
telling off an aged rural policeman attired in a comic- opera
uniform. The big church-doors stood open ; in the half-light of
the nave wounded men were aligned on beds of straw, with
nurses, medical orderhes and white-aproned doctors moving
to and fro amongst them. Outside, a Company Quartermaster-
Sergeant, standing on a cart, was bawling across the tumult,
‘Number Five Company! This way for rations!’
The column was making slower and slower headway. The
main street narrowed into a bottle-neck behind the church.
Wedged into a solid mass, the company marked time, chafing
at the delay. An old man seated at his door in a grandfather’s
chair, his hands splayed on his knees, watched the scene with
the air of a dramatic critic at an indifferent first night. ‘Say !’
he called to the Police Sergeant. ‘How far d’you think you’re
going on retreating like this?’ ‘Don’t know. We’re waiting for
orders.’ The old man’s limpid gaze lingered for a moment on
the stretcher and the gendarmes; then he wagged his head
disapprovingly. ‘I seen the same thing in ’70. Only we held out
longer.’ But Jacques saw a vague compassion in the grey old
eyes. A glint of kindness.
The column was advancing again. It had crossed the centre
of the town. ‘I’m told we’re halting over there, opposite the last
houses in the street,’ said the Police Sergeant, who had just
consulted his superior officer. ‘So much the better,’ Marjoulat
remarked. ‘We’ll be the first to get away.’ The cobbles ended
and the street became a country road, flanked by cottages and
gardens. ‘Halt! Let the waggons pass!’ ‘You chaps,’ said the
Sergeant, ‘run back and see if the “cooker” ain’t somewhere
behind. We could do with a bite. I’ll stay here with Paoli, to
keep an eye on Chinaware.’
The stretcher had been laid on the roadside near a drinking-
trough at which men of all arms were filling their water-bottles.
The water was splashing over the edge, trickling down the side
of the trough in glistening runlets which held Jacques’ eyes
enthralled. There was a bitter metallic taste in his mouth, his
saliva had the feel of sodden cotton-wool. ‘Like a drink, lad?’
795
SUMMER, 1914
Miracle of miracles, the glint of a white bowl in the brown
hands of an old peasant-woman ! A group of people had col-
lected : soldiers, civilians, old men with tanned cheeks, children,
womenfolk. The bowl drew near Jacques’ lips. He was trem-
bling, his eyes glowing with doglike gratitude. Milk ! He drank
it painfully, sip by sip. With a corner of her apron the old
woman wiped his chin after each sip.
A medical officer came up. ‘A wounded man?’ ‘Yes, sir. But
you needn’t waste your time on him, he’s a spy — a Boche.’ The
old peasant jumped away as if she had been stung, and tipped
out the milk remaining in her bowl into the dust. ‘It’s a spy.
A German spy.’ As the news went round the bystanders closed
in on Jacques. They were in an ugly mood. He was alone,
defenceless, bound hand and foot. He turned his eyes away.
Suddenly a burning sensation on his cheek made him jerk his
head back. There were guffaws. He had a glimpse of a young
workman in blue overalls bending above him. The youngster
gave a jeering laugh ; between his fingers was a cigarette, the
tip of which glowed brightly. ‘Let him be,’ growldd the Police
Sergeant. ‘But it’s a spy,’ the lad protested. ‘A spy ! Come and
have a look at the swine !’ People flocked up from the cottages
beside the road, an angry crowd gathered round. It was all
the policemen could do to keep their hands off Jacques. ‘What
was he up to?’ ‘Where did you nab him?’ ‘Why didn’t you
shoot the bastard at sight?’ A small boy picked up some pebbles
and flung them. Others followed his example. ‘That’s enough
of it,’ the Sergeant bawled. ‘Stop that, you young devils !’
Then, turning to Paoli : ‘Just shift him into that yard. And
don’t forget to lock the gate.’
Jacques felt himself raised from the ground and carried
forward. The sound of hostile, jeering voices died away into a
restful silence. Where was he? He cast a quick glance around.
He was in a farmyard, well out of sight, in the shadow of a barn
fragrant with warm hay. Beside him was an antiquated wagon-
ette, the two stumps of its broken shafts projecting in the air ;
some hens were perched on them, asleep. How delightful were
the cool shadows, this heaven-sent solitude ! Ah, if he could
only die here, in this peace !
796
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
He awoke with a start. The gendarmes had burst in like an
avalanche. The fowls scattered in all directions, cackling with
affright.
What was happening? All around was a wild commotion,
shouting, a general stampede. The Police Sergeant hurriedly
put on his tunic and equipment. ‘Hey there! Pick up China-
ware ! And put a jerk into it !’ Along the narrow street on the
far side of the farmyard an ambulance unit was trotting past.
‘Look, Sarge, they’re moving out the first-aid station as well.’
‘Yes, yes, I know. Where’s Marjoulat got to, damn him I Hurry
up, Paoli. What’s this now? What do the Sappers want here?
Two lorries, followed by a fatigue party, had entered the yard.
The men began unloading coils of barbed wire and picquets.
‘Stow the wire in that corner 1 The rest of the stuff, here. Look
sharp!’ The Police Sergeant went up to the N.C.O. in charge
of the fatigue party and enquired anxiously: ‘Bad as all that,
is it?’ ‘Seems so. We’ve been detailed to put this place in a state
of defence. I hear they’ve occupied the Vosges already and
are pushing on to Belfort. There’s talk of asking for a truce,
I hear, so’s to spare the country an invasion’ ‘Gosh, you don’t
say so ! Then it’s all up with us?’ ‘See here, the best thing you
chaps can do is to hook it right away. No use hanging about
here. The inhabitants have been told to clear out. The town’s
got to be evacuated within an hour.’ The Police Sergeant swung
round on his subordinates. ‘Well, what about it? Get a move
on with that stretcher! Now, Marjoulat, there’s no time for
dawdling.’ A roar of engines in the farmyard. The lorries had
been unloaded and were turning. The voice of a captain rang
out through the din. ‘Now, men, forage round for all the
ploughs and harrows you can lay hands on. Reaping-machines,
too. Tell Lieutenant Martin to stop the people here from taking
away their carts. We’ll need them to barricade the roads.’
‘Marjoulat! What are you waiting for?’ shouted the Police
Sergeant. ‘Right, Sergeant. We’re just starting.’
Four arms lifted the stretcher. Jacques groaned. The gend-
armes swung into the road, along which the troops were
moving forward in column of route. The formation was so close
that it was no easy matter finding a place within the serried
797
SUMMER, 1914
mass. ‘Shove for edl you’re worth,’ Marjoulat shouted to Paoli.
‘We’ve got to squeeze in somehow, or we’ll get left.’ ^BastaP the
Corsican exclaimed. ‘Surely they don’t expect us to cart this
jackanapes about the country till our legs drop off!’
Jolts. Jolts. In every joint and sinew pain blazed up again.
The little town was in an uproar. In each house and back-
yard people were shouting, protesting, breaking into lamenta-
tions. The farmers were feverishly harnessing their horses to
light carts which the women loaded with trunks, bundles,
cradles, baskets of foodstuffs. Many families were escaping on
foot. They mingled with the ranks of marching men, some of
them wheeling go-carts or baby-carriages piled with their
household goods. On the left of the road a string of ammu-
nition waggons drawn by sturdy cart-horses was moving past
at a slow trot, making an ear-splitting din. Every side-street
was disgorging into the main stream donkey-carts and wains
stacked with crates, furniture and mattresses on which old
women and children were perched uneasily. The civilian
vehicles wormed their way into the file of regimental waggons
that was moving at walking pace along the centre of the road.
Forced off the roadway to the right by the wheeled traffic, the
troops advanced as best they could along the edge of the road
and in the ditch. The sun blazed down relentlessly. With bent
shoulders, their caps shoved back and handkerchiefs spread
over the napes of their necks to shield them from the glare,
laden like beasts of burden — ^some were even carrying faggots
slung across their shoulders — they slogged ahead. No one spoke.
They had lost touch with their regiments. They did not know
whence they had come, whither they were going. No matter;
after a week of war they had given up trying to understand.
All they knew was that they were ‘on the run.’ And the satis-
faction of escaping, fear, shame and exhaustion had stamped
all faces with a like expression of tragic fatalism. The only
moments when they broke silence were when, jostled by the
man beside him, one of them let out a savage oath.
Jacques’ eyes opened and shut at the more violent jolts. The
pain in his legs had subsided a little during his brief rest in the
shadow of the barn, but his inflamed mouth was throbbing
798
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
violently as ever. The dust, the fetid emanations from the
sweating mass around him clogged his lungs, and the wavelike
motion of the closely packed bodies gave him a feeling of nausea.
He made no effort to think. He was a scrap of human jetsam,
rejected by all men — even by himself.
The retreat continued. The road grew narrower, flanked by
shelving banks, and there were frequent halts. As at each halt
the stretcher was dumped roughly on the ground, Jacques
opened his eyes abruptly. ‘^Basta! If we crawl along like this,
the Fritzes will have easy work . . .’ ‘Aw, shut your trap!’
the Sergeant cut in — his nerves, too, were getting jangled —
‘Can’t you see we’re starting again .^’ The column floundered
on another fifty yards, then stopped abruptly. The gendarmes
halted at the junction of a by-road where a company was
drawn up in close formation, their rifles slung across their
backs. On the top of the bank a group of officers stood round
the captain, studying their maps and confabulating. His
interest roused by the stretcher, a Sergeant Major appioached.
The Police Sergeant asked him : ‘Where’s your lot going?’
‘Dunno. The C.O.’s waiting for orders.’ ‘Things going badly,
what?’ ‘Looks like it. The Jerries have been seen just north,
I hear.’ An officer stepped forward to the edge of the embank-
ment and shouted. ‘Slope arms I By the right, follow my lead.’
Leaving the crowded road on the left, he led his men into the
fields adjoining it. ‘That chap knows his job, Sarge. They’ll
be there hours ahead of us.’ The Police Sergeant chewed his
moustache and made no answer.
The halt continued. It seemed that some considerable
obstacle was holding up the column. Even the artillery trains
on the left had stopped moving. A cyclist unit, wheeling their
machines, tried to thread their way between the vehicles, but
they, too, soon were brought to a standstill.
Twenty minutes passed. The column had not progressed
ten yards. On the right, infantry units were retreating ’cross
country westwards. The Police Sergeant began fidgeting. He
beckoned to his gendarmes. Their heads met above the stretcher
in a whispered colloquy. ‘Blast it ail, we can’t stay here all day,
like stuck pigs ! Why don’t they get a move on with their
799
SUMMER, 1914
bloody column? I been told off to do a job, ain’t I, and that’s
to deliver this young ruffian to the Provost Sergeant this
evening. Well, I’ll take the responsibility. Follow me ! Jump to
it, boys!’ The gendarmes complied at once. Thrusting aside
the men around them, they picked up the stretcher, charged
across the road, scrambled up the bank and made off through
the fields.
The headlong rush across the ditch and up the bank had
drawn from Jacques a long, hoarse moan of pain. Twisting his
head, he tried to open his swollen lips. Another jolt. Another.
Sky and trees swirled in a crimson mist. The ’plane was going
up in flames, his legs blazing like torches, the red death clawing
at his thighs, scrabbling at his heart. The world went black.
He fainted.
A violent impact jerked him back to consciousness. Where
was he? The stretcher was lying in a meadow. How long had
he been here? It seemed to have lasted days, this interminable
journey. The light had changed, the sun was lower. It must
be near sunset. Ah, to die I The extremity of pain was acting
like an opiate. He felt as if he were buried so deep underground
that jolts, sounds, voices came to him from far -away, faint and
blurred. Had he slept? Had it been a dream? A picture still
held his eyes of a clump of acacias, a white goat browsing near
it, a water-meadow into which the gendarmes’ jack-boots had
sunk deep, splashing him with mud. He opened his eyes wide,
trying to see. Marjoulat, Paoli and the Sergeant were on their
knees. Some way off was a great heaving mass — a company
lying flat. Their packs wedged together formed a vast, compact
carapace pulsating on the grass.
Standing behind his men, a Captain raked the horizon with
his field-glasses. On the left was a knoll, with a shelving meadow
on which a red-and-blue battalion was deployed fanwise, like
a patience pack spread on a green baize card-table.
‘What are we waiting for, Sarge?’ ‘Orders.’ ‘If we had to run
for it,’ Marjoulat remarked, ‘how’d we manage to get away
with this chap Chinaweire on our hands?’
The Captain, who had moved beside the Police Sergeant,
lent him his field-glasses. Suddenly a cavalry troop galloped
800
MONDAY, AUGUST lO
up from the right. The N.C.O. in front, a mere boy, was stand-
ing in his stirrups, the horse-tail of his helmet streamed in the
wind. His eyes were sparkling with excitement, his gloved hand
pointed eastwards. ‘They’re over there. Behind the ridge. Not
two miles off. Our rearguard must be in action by now.’
His voice rang out, clear and gay. Jacques had a glimpse of
his face and through the twilight of his thoughts there flashed
a memory of Daniel.
A metallic rattle broke out on all sides. Those around had
heard what the young man had said and, without waiting for
orders, were fixing bayonets. Their conduct was infectious; a
forest of slim, shining blades seemed to spring up from the
earth. All eyes swung round, towards the unseen menace of
that quiet hillside bathed in golden light. The horses were
nibbling the lush grass. At a sign from their leader the troop
fell in and trotted away. The captain in command reined up
and shouted: ‘Tell them to send us orders!’ Then, turning to
the Police Sergeant, he added: ‘Ever seen anything like it?
What the devil do they expect us to do when they leave us in
the air like this?’ ‘Look here, Sarge,’ Marjoulat muttered,
‘ain’t it time to make a move?’ ‘Look! They’ve started over
yonder.’ Paoli pointed to the hillside where the battalion that
had been deployed over the fields was doubling, in successive
waves, towards the summit. Line by line the men were vanish-
ing over the ridge. ‘Forward !’ cried the Captain. ‘Right !’ the
Sergeant said. ‘It’s “forward” for us, too.’
The stretcher was yanked up hastily. Jacques moaned. No
one listened, none took notice. Why couldn’t they leave him
here and let him die in peace? Jolt upon jolt. Every fifty yards
or so the stretcher was dumped down and the gendarmes,
kneeling, took breath before starting up the hill again. Around
them troops were still advancing in short rushes. At last the
gendarmes had come within a few yards of the ridge. The
Captain was standing just in front of them. ‘On the other side,’
he said, ‘in the valley there’s a wood with a road running
through it. We’ll be able to move South-West under cover.
But no dawdling on the slope, mind you ! It’s in full view.’
The last batch of troops was sweeping over the crest. ‘Double !’
8oi DD
SUMMER, 1914
‘Follow them !’ cried the Sergeant. The stretcher was jerked
up again; they reached the summit. A meadow dotted with
small trees dropped down towards a wooded gorge, from which
a forest stretched as far as eye could reach. ‘Make a bee-line
for the woods ! Jump to it, boys !’ A high-pitched shriek rent
the air, swelled to the hurtling roar of an express train.
Once again the stretcher dropped heavily on the ground. The
gendarmes flung themselves on their faces amongst the soldiers,
each with but one thought — to make himself as flat as possible,
to wriggle into the yielding soil as soles burrow into the sand
when the tide ebbs. There was a terrific crash in the wood on
the far side of the ravine. Panic was visible on every face.
‘They’ve got us taped.’ ‘Move on, damn it!’ ‘We’ll be shot to
pieces in that bloody wood.’ ‘Hop it to the gully, everyone I’
Jumping to their feet, they charged down the slope, dropping
under cover of every shrub and hummock on the way, then
leaping up and running on again. The gendarmes iollowed,
rocking the stretcher so violently that every joint creaked. At
last they reached the wood. Jacques’ body was a quivering
mass of bruised, mangled flesh. During the descent his whole
weight had borne upon his fractured legs. The leather straps
had bitten into his thighs and shoulders. He had lost track of
everything. When the stretcher crashed like a projectile into
the undergrowth, he felt a sudden stinging swish of branches
on his limbs, thorns tearing his cheeks and hands. For a moment
he half opened his eyes ; then a great peace descended on him.
Life seemed ebbing from his body in a slow, warm, sickly-sweet
stream, like blood from a punctured artery. A dream of falling,
falling through the void. . . . The ’plane, the leaflets. . . .
A fiery hiss as of a rocket rose on the air, zoomed overhead.
There was a buzz of voices. Human sounds. He opened his eyes
again. The stretcher lay on a bed of pine-needles, in a bower of
green shadows. All around was a confused murmur; men
fretting and fuming with impatience, unable to advance or
turn, wedged into a solid mass, hampered by their equipment,
their packs and rifles entangled in the brushwood. ‘Stop
shoving!’ ‘What are we waiting for?’ ‘We’ve sent out patrols.’
‘Yes, got to make sure there ain’t no Germans in this wood,
802
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
before advancing.’ Officers and N.C.O.s. were making frantic
efforts to get their units together, but without success. ‘Stop
talking!’ ‘C Company, this way!’ ‘B Company, fall in here!’
Just beside the stretcher a man was leaning against a pine-tree,
overcome by profound, deathlike sleep. He was quite young,
but his cheeks were hollow, grey and wrinkled. His right arm
pressed the rifle-butt stiffly to his waist as if he were preparing
to slope arms. ‘They say the third battalion’s been marched
round to cover our flank.’ ‘This way, lads!’ The speaker was
a corporal, a sturdy old peasant who was bustling his section
into the wood like an old hen convoying her brood.
A lieutenant stepped across the stretcher ; he had the arrogant
yet flustered look of the officer who has lost grip but is out
to save his face at all costs. ‘Now then, N.C.O.s, get the men
to stop talking. Will you obey, yes or no, damn you ! Number
One Section, fall in !’ Grumbling, the men pushed their way
forward; though, in fact, they asked for nothing better than
to find themselves back amongst their mates, taken charge
of, officered again. Some were grinning, reassured by the
near horizons of the wood, in an absurd belief that fighting
stopped where open country ended and the trees began. Now
and again a battalion runner, panting, perspiring, furious at
being unable to find the officer he was looking for, pushed his
way through the ranks and vanished into the undergrowth,
after darting exasperated glances round him and bawling out
the number of a regiment or a commanding officer’s name.
Again a prolonged whistle, a sound less strident, crisper than
before, skimmed the tree-tops. Everyone stopped talking and
ducked ; packs slid forward, humped bent shoulders. This time
the burst took place some way to the right. ‘That was a 75.’
‘No, a 77.’ The gendarmes stood bunched round the stretcher
as if it were the only justification of their presence here, in a
stolid, compact group, staunch as a rock in the surging mass
of men.
At the edge of the wood a voice rapped out a command.
‘At 1,800 metres. At the hilltop, the black copse. Fire !’ A volley
jarred the air. Then a sudden hush fell on the wood. After
another volley sporadic firing broke out in all directions. All
803
SUMMER, 1914.
who were anywhere near the edge of the wood had turned
towards the meadows and brought their rifles to their shoulders ;
without waiting for orders, glad to have an opportunity at last
of doing something, they fired blind across the leafage. The
young man who had been leaning against the tree, asleep, was
kneeling now at the foot of the stretcher and firing steadily,
resting his rifle in the fork of a low branch. Each shot stung
Jacques like a whip-lash, but he was too weak now to open
his eyes.
Crashing through the brushwood, three officers, a colonel and
two majors, galloped up. A harsh voice barked out above the
rattle of rifle-fire : ‘Who the devil gave you the order? Are you
off your heads? What are you firing at? D’you want to have
the whole brigade spotted by the enemy?’ On all sides N.C.O.s.
started bawling, ‘Cease fire! Fall in!’ The firing stopped at
once and, moved by a collective impulse, the clotted mass of
men, who had seemed jammed beyond all possibility of
extrication, swung round and formed up, facing in the same
direction. Then, shoulder to shoulder, slowly, silently, they
streamed across the wood, like a great flight of migratory
birds, led by their officers. The rhythmic thudding of heavy
boots on the soft carpet of pine-needles and a light metallic
tinkle of canteens, mugs and dixies filled the forest. A cloud
of red dust, faintly odorous of resin, floated up through the
leafage.
‘What about us, Sarge?’ The Police Sergeant had already
come to a decision. ‘We’ll follow that lot.’ ‘With Chinaware?’
‘Aye, blast it! Can’t leave him behind. Follow me, lads!’
Lunging forward as if he were charging at the enemy, he
butted his way into the stream of troops, with the two gend-
armes other than the stretcher-bearers at his heels. The latter
grasped the stretcher- poles hurriedly. ‘Ready, Marjoulat?’ the
Corsican panted. ‘Off we go !’ But his efforts to wedge himsel
into the advancing ranks were unavailing; the stretcher was
swept violently away each time. ‘Better wait,’ Marjoulat
advised him. ‘They’ll thin out a bit presently.’ ‘Basta!’ Paoli
let his end of the stretcher drop with a thud. ‘I’ll run ahead
and tell the Sergeant to wait for us.’ ‘No, no !’ the old gendarme
804
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
cried, dropping his end of the stretcher. ‘You can’t leave me
like that, Paoli. It ain’t fair!’ But the Corsican was already out
of earshot. Nimble as an eel, he had wriggled into a gap in
the ranks ; his blue kepi was swallowed up at once within the
moving mass. ‘The devil I’ Marjoulat muttered, and bent over
Jacques as he had done before, to give him a drink. But now
there was fury in his eyes. ‘You’ve given us enough trouble
as it is, you swine!’ But Jacques did not hear: he had
fainted.
Thrusting aside the branches, the gendarme gripped the
shoulder-strap of a passing soldier to detain him. ‘Give us a
hand with this contraption.’ ‘Ain’t a stretcher-bearer,’ the man
replied surlily, wrenching himself free. The gendarme noticed
a fat, fair-haired, good-humoured looking man coming up.
‘Give us a hand, chum !’ ‘Nothing doing !’ ‘What the hell am
I to do with this here scallawag?’ Marjoulat whimpered,
mopping his face with his handkerchief.
The ranks were beginning to thin out. If Paoli came back
now, they could make a start, for sure ! ‘Sir !’ Marjoulat called
timidly to a passing officer who was leading his horse. The
officer did not so much as turn his head. The men passing now
were the stragglers ; they trudged forward, limping, staggering
with fatigue but spurred on by the dread of being left behind.
No use appealing to them; none would dream of cumbering
himself with a stretcher.
Suddenly from the fields beyond the wood there came a
babble of voices, a sound of hurrying feet. Marjoulat went pale,
swung round ; instinctively his hand went to his holster and his
fingers closed on the big police revolver. No, those were French
voices. ‘This way, men. This way.’ A wounded man showed
up amongst the pines, moving blindly forward like a sleep-
walker ; there was a bandage round his forehead, his lips were
white. A dozen men without packs or rifles plunged after him
into the wood — walking wounded, with an arm in a sling, a
bandaged hand or knee. ‘Is this the way, mate? Is that path
safe? They ain’t far away, you know.’ ‘What’s that?’ — Mar-
joulat’s teeth were chattering — ‘Not far away^’
The branches parted again. A Medical Officer appeared,
805
SUMMER, 1914
walking backwards, clearing a path for two orderlies who had
linked hands cradlewise and were carrying a fat man, bare-
headed with deathly pale cheeks. The unbuttoned tunic had
four stripes; above the plump paunch the shirt was blood-
stained. ‘Gently, men. Gently does it.’ The Medical Officer
caught sight of Marjoulat with Jacques lying at his feet. He
spun round at once. ‘Ah, a stretcher! Who is it? What’s a
civilian doing here?’ Marjoulat, standing to attention, stam-
mered awkwardly : ‘It’s a spy, sir.’ ‘What? A spy ! Well, that’s
the limit. Shift the blighter off. I need that stretcher for the
Major here. Get on with it.’
Obediently the gendarme started unbuckling straps, undoing
the thongs. A tremor passed through Jacques’ body; his hand
stirred feebly, he opened his eyes. A Medical Officer. Antoine
. . .? He made desperate efforts to understand, to remember.
The agony was past. They were setting him free, they would
quench his thirst. But — what were they doing now? The
stretcher was jerked up. A weak cry broke from his lips. Why
need they be so rough? Excruciating torture; thv^ fractured
bones were piercing his flesh like red-hot needles, jabbing every
nerve and sinew of his mangled legs. No one saw his mouth
convulsed with agony, his eyes wide with horror and amaze.
He was tipped out of the stretcher like a sand-bag from a
wheelbarrow. He fell on his side with a low groan, and suddenly
a mortal chill came creeping up, slowly, implacably, from his
limbs towards his heart.
The gendarme had made no protest. Now he was gazing
timidly about him. The Medical Officer studied his map, while
the orderlies rapidly laid the wounded Major, whose shirt was
now a mass of blood, upon the stretcher. Marjoulat asked in a
quavering voice :
‘Is it true, sir, that they’re quite near?’
An eldritch wail rent the air, followed by a violent concussion
close at hand that seemed to make his brain jump in the
brain-pan. Almost at once a rattattat of rifle fire broke out in
the meadows bordering the wood.
‘Forward !’ the Doctor cried, ‘or we’ll be caught between
two fires. We’re goners if we stay here.’
806
MONDAY, AUGUST 10
Like the others Marjoulat had thrown himself flat at the
moment of the shell-burst. As he dragged himself laboriously
to his feet, he saw the stretcher being carted away and the file
of wounded men vanishing behind the trees. Piteously he
yelled after them: ‘Eh now? What about me? Don’t leave me
behind, mates!’ A sergeant with a bandaged wrist who was
bringing up the rear turned and glared at him but did not stop.
‘What about me?’ Marjoulat wailed again. ‘What the hell am
I to do with this here varmint?’ The sergeant, a veteran with
cheeks bronzed by service in the colonies, raised his unwounded
arm and, shaping his fingers into a speaking-trumpet, bawled :
‘Whatcher worrying about a muckin’ spy? Plug him one, you
bloody fool, and have done with the bastard. And, take my
tip, and get a move on or you’ll cop a packet before you know
where you are.’
‘What the hell am I to do?’ Marjoulat repeated helplessly.
But now there was no answer. He was alone with this corpse-
like body with closed eyes, lying on its side before him. Silence,
an eerie, sinister hush, had fallen on the forest. ‘They’re not
far off.’ ‘Plug him one, you fool I’ The words echoed in his
fuddled brain. He plunged his hand into his revolver-holster.
His eyes were pale with terror. He had never killed — not even
an animal. And, doubtless, had Jacques’ eyes opened, had
Marjoulat met their living gaze for but one instant, his courage
would have failed him. But it seemed as if already life had left
that bloodless face, that temple lying flat, inert, helplessly
prostrate at his feet. Looking away, the gendarme thrust the
hand gripping the revolver downwards. His lips were twitching,
his features contorted with horror. The muzzle touched some-
thing — a lock of hair? an ear? To nerve himself and by the
same token to justify himself, he cried, gritting his teeth :
‘Scum!’
Word and detonation rang out at the same moment.
Free at last! The gendarme drew himself up hastily and,
without looking back, plunged into the brushwood. Branches
lashed his cheeks, dry twigs crackled underfoot. The retreating
troops had left a wide track trampled flat across the under-
growth. His mates were only a little way ahead. He was saved !
807
SUMMER, 1914
He took to his heels — in headlong flight from peril, from
isolation, from the man he had killed. He held his breath so as
to keep the pace, and at each spurt, to vent his rancour and
affright, snarled through his clenched teeth :
‘The scum ! The filthy scum !’
The business of a translator is to translate, not to have views, still less to
air them; nevertheless, considering the tragic times in which this book
appears, the present translator feels justified in here recording that the
translation of the foregoing pages was commissioned before ‘Munich’ and
completed at the outbreak of the war, the delay in publication being due
to the belated issue of the Epilogue in France. — translator.
808
EPILOGUE
I
In Hospital
‘ Hi there, Pierret! Don’t you hear the ’phone?’
The orderly on duty in the office had taken advantage of the
hour when the ground floor of the hospital was empty (all the
staff and patients being upstairs for the morning course of treat-
ments) to stroll on to the terrace and bask for a moment in the
sunny, jasmine-scented air. Dropping his cigarette, he ran to
the telephone-box.
‘Hullo !’
‘Hullo ! Grasse Post-Office speaking. We’ve a telegram here
for Le Mousquier Hospital.’
‘Half a tick !’ The orderly drew towards him a writing-pad
and pencil. ‘Right you are. Carry on.’
The postal employee had already begun dictating.
‘‘Pans. May 3, igi8. 7-15- To Dr. Thibault, Gas Casualties
Hospital, Le Mousquier, near Grasse. Got it?’
‘Near Grasse,’ the orderly repeated. ‘Carry on.’
^Aunt de Waize. Waize with a “z.” W-a-i-z-e. Got it? Aunt
de Waize died yesterday. Stop. Funeral Sunday ten 0^ clock at the Home
Point du Jour. Stop. Love, Gise. G-i-s-e. That’s all. Wait, I’ll read
it over again.’
As the orderly, after crossing the hall, approached the stair-
case, an elderly attendant wearing a white apron and carrying
a tray appeared at the kitchen door.
‘Going upstairs, Ludovic? Be a good chap and take this
telegram for No. 53.’
No. 53 was empty, the bed made, the room tidied up. Going
to the open window, Ludovic glanced out into the garden, but
there, too, could see no sign of Dr. Thibault. A number of
convalescent officers and men, in blue pyjamas and canvas
shoes, some wearing kepis, others forage-caps, were strolling in
811
SUMMER, 1914
the sunshine, in twos and threes. Others were seated, reading
newspapers, in deck-chairs placed on the shady side of a row
of cypresses.
The infusion on Ludovic’s tray was cooling down. Hastily
picking it up again, he turned into Room 57. For a fortnight
now ‘No. 57’ had been confined to bed. His shoulders propped
up with pillows, his unshorn cheeks glistening with sweat, his
features lined and haggard, he was fighting for breath ; the
sound of his gasps could be heard far down the corridor.
Ludovic measured out two spoonfuls of medicine into the
infusion, and as the patient brought the mug to his lips sup-
ported his shoulders to make it easier for him to drink. After
emptying the spittoon into the basin and bestowing a few
encouraging remarks, he hurried out to look for Dr. Thibault.
Just to make sure, before leaving the floor, he looked into
Room 49. The colonel, stretched on a wicker couch with his
spittoon beside him, was playing bridge with three other
officers. Dr. Thibault was not amongst them.
‘He must be in the inhaling room,’ suggested Dr. Bardot,
whom Ludovic encountered at the foot of the stairs. ‘Give me
the telegram; I’m just going up.’
Their heads hooded with towels, several patients were bend-
ing over the inhalers. Silence reigned in the little room; the
atmosphere was like a vapour-bath, reeking with fumes of
menthol and eucalyptus, and so dense that it was almost
impossible to see across it.
‘Are you there, Thibault? Here’s a wire for you.’
Antoine’s head emerged from a cocoon of towels, flushed and
beaded with perspiration. After sponging his eyes, he took the
telegram Bardot held out to him, and opened it.
‘Not bad news, I hope?’
Antoine shook his head. In a hollow, brittle, toneless voice,
he replied :
‘It’s to announce the death of ... an old lady, a distant
relative.’
Slipping the telegram into his pyjama pocket, he plunged
his head again under the swathe of towels.
Bardot tapped his shoulder.
8 I 2
EPILOGUE
‘Your report’s in from the lab. Come along to my room and
see it, when you’ve finished here.’
Dr. Bardot was of the same generation as Antoine. They had
met in the old days' at Paris, as medical students. But Bardot
had been suddenly obliged to cut short his studies and spend
two years under treatment at a high altitude. He had been
cured, but as his health remained precarious and he dared not
face the Paris winters, he had taken his degrees at the Mont-
pellier Medical Institute. He had specialized in diseases of the
lung and the outbreak of war found him in charge of a sana-
torium in South-West France. In 1916 Professor Segre, under
whom he had studied at Montpellier, had asked him to col-
laborate in the management of a Gas Casualties Hospital he
had been instructed to establish in the Riviera. Together they
had organized -the Le Mousquier Hospital near Grasse, in which
fifteen officers and some sixty men were now undergoing
treatment.
It was towards the end of November 1917 that Antoine, in
the course of a medical inspection on the Champagne front,
had been caught in a mustard gas attack; after having been
unsuccessfully treated at various field hospitals, he had finally
been sent to Le Mousquier, at the end of the following month.
As it so happened Antoine was the only M.O. gas casualty
in the Officers’ Section of the Le Mousquier Hospital. Their
association in younger days naturally drew him and Bardot
together, though temperamentally they were poles apart. Bar-
dot was an introspective type of man, painstaking, with little
initiative or will-power. What he had in common with Antoine
was a whole-hearted devotion to his calling and a high sense
of his professional responsibilities. They soon discovered that
(as Antoine described it to himself) they ‘spoke the same lan-
guage,’ and a warm friendship had sprung up between them.
Bardot, to whom Professor Segre left all the executive tasks of
the hospital, had no great liking for his assistant. Dr. Mazet,
a military medical officer from the Colonial Army, who had
been given his present post after being severely wounded at
the Front. This made him all the more disposed to impart to
Antoine his theories and problems, to take Antoine’s opinion
813
SUMMER, 1914
and keep him posted as to the progress of his research-work
in this new and, so far, relatively uncharted field of medicine.
Naturally there could be no question of Antoine seconding
Bardot in his duties. His state of health did not permit it, in
any case. He was liable to frequent relapses and it was all he
could do to look after himself, and to follow the elaborate
course of treatment his malady required. Still this did not
prevent him from displaying a keen interest in the case-histories
of the other patients and, whenever a turn for the better gave
him a short lease of energy, he made a point of attending
Bardot’s consultations, taking a hand in his experiments, and
sometimes even joining in the nightly conferences which took
place in Professor Segre’s study, along with Bardot and Dr.
Mazet. Thanks to these activities he found the atmosphere of
of the hospital less trying, for he led there the life not merely
of a patient but, at whiles, of a doctor too. And thus he felt
less cut off from all the things which for the last fifteen years,
in peacetime as in war, had constituted his true, indeed his
only interest in life.
When the inhalation was over Antoine knotted a scarf round
his neck as a precaution against the cooler- air outside, and
went downstairs to join his friend, who every morning spent
half an hour in the annexe, fitted out as a gymnasium, super-
vising the breathing exercises he had prescribed for certain
patients.
Standing in their midst, Bardot seemed conducting, smilingly
intent, a raucous symphony of straining lungs. He topped the
tallest of those present by several inches, and his premature
baldness disclosed a high-domed forehead that made him seem
taller still. The bulk of his body was in keeping with his height ;
this ex-consumptive was a positive Colossus, and from shoulders
to waist, the burly back, under the close-fitting surgical
jacket, showed as an almost perfect square, majestically pro-
portioned.
‘Good news,’ he said, leading Antoine at once into the small
recess which served as changing-room, where they could talk
without being overheard. ‘I confess I was a bit afraid. . . .
But there was no albumen. A good sign.’
814
EPILOGUE
He took a slip of paper tucked inside his coat-cuff and handed
it to Antoine, who ran his eyes over it.
‘I’ll give this back to you to-night, after I’ve copied it.’ From
the time he had been gassed, Antoine had kept up, in a special
diary, a detailed clinical record of his case.
‘You spend the devil of a time in the inhaling-room !’ There
was disapproval in Bardot’s voice. ‘Sure it doesn’t tire you?’
‘Not a bit. I’m a great believer in these inhalations.’ Antoine’s
voice was weak and rather breathless, but clear. ‘When I wake,
the mucus in my larynx causes complete aphonia. But, as you
see, my voice comes back pretty effectively once I’ve scoured
my throat with a good strong inhalation.’
Bardot refused to be convinced.
‘All very well, but don’t overdo it. Aphonia’s a nuisance, I
grant, but it’s a lesser evil. Too much inhaling may very well
cut short the cough prematurely.’ The drawling, melodious
voice bespoke him for a Burgundian, and seemed to enhance
the gentleness and gravity of his expression.
He had provided Antoine with a chair, and now sat down
himself. He always tried to give his patients an impression that
he was not in a hurry, but had ample leisure to devote to
them ; and that nothing interested him more than hearing every
detail of their symptoms.
After asking Antoine how he had felt during the previous
day and if he had slept well, he added : ‘I advise you to start
in again one of these days with an expectorant. Terpene or
drosera — as you prefer. In a cup of borage tea. Yes, yes, it’s
an old wives’ remedy, I know. But there’s nothing like a good
profuse sweat just before going to sleep — provided, of course,
you take care not to catch a chill.’ The way his voice lingered
on certain vowels gave his speech a fervour of the ‘warm South,’
the vibrant richness of the low notes of a ’cello.
He had a weakness for lavishing counsels on his patients,
staunchly believed in the efficacy of his treatments, and refused
to be discouraged by any setback. And there was nothing he
liked better than to impart this faith of his to a listener —
especially to Antoine, whose superior intelligence he frankly
admitted to himself, without a shade of jealousy.
815
SUMMER, 1914
‘If you want to reduce your expectoration at night,’ he went
on, his eyes still fixed on Antoine, ‘why not try the sulfo-
arsenical treatment for some days? Don’t you agree?’ he added,
turning to Dr. Mazet, who had just come in.
Mazet did not answer. He had opened a cupboard at the
far end of the room and was changing from his khaki tunic,
threadbare and faded by repeated washing, but lavishly berib-
boned— into a white coat. A faint odour of perspiration hovered
in the air.
‘If the aphonia gets more pronounced,’ Bardot observed,
‘we can always fall back again on strychnine. It had excellent
results last winter with Chapuis.’
Mazet swung round with a guffaw.
‘Chapuis! Well, I must say you might have chosen a more
encouraging example ... I’
He had a square skull, a low forehead cleft by a deep scar,
and a thick growth of stubbly greying hair that came low down
on his temples. Under the eflfect of any emotion the whites
of his eyes grew bloodshot. The sleek black moustache stood
out sharply against his skin, tanned by years of service overseas.
Antoine looked enquiringly at Bardot.
‘Happily there’s no parallel between Thibault’s case and
Chapuis’,’ Bardot made haste to declare; but he was unable
to conceal his vexation. ‘Poor Chapuis is in a bad way. I’m
afraid,’ he explained, turning again to Antoine. ‘He had a very
bad night. I was called to his room twice. Heart in a shocking
state; he has irregular extrasystoles all the time. When the
Chief comes this morning, 1 shall take him straight to No. 57.’
Mazet, as he buttoned his coat, had joined them. For some
moments they discussed the various cardio-vascular complica-
tions due to mustard gas, ‘which take various forms,’ Bardot
pointed out, ‘according to the patient’s age.’ (Chapuis, an
artillery colonel, was in the fifties and had been under treat-
ment for eight months.)
‘ . . . and according to his constitution,’ Antoine added.
Chapuis’ room was next to that of Antoine, who had several
times listened to his chest, and had formed the opinion that
the Colonel before being gassed, had suffered from mitral in-
816
EPILOGUE
competence — a circumstance which neither Segre, nor Bardot,
nor Mazet, seemed to have suspected. He was on the point of
mentioning his discovery. Even more than in the past, his pride
was apt to be agreeably titillated by ‘catching out’ a colleague
— even one whom he liked personally — and pointing out his
blunders. It was a mild, if slightly malicious, compensation for
lor the feeling of inferiority that illness had imposed on him.
But talking was an effort, and he refrained.
‘Had a look at the papers to-day?’ Mazet enquired.
Antoine shook his head.
‘It seems the German push in Flanders is definitely held up,’
Bardot remarked.
‘Yes, it looks like that,’ Mazet agreed. ‘Ypres is holding out
and the British official reports state that all attacks on the Yser
line have been repulsed.’
‘Must have cost them a lot in lives,’ Antoine said.
Mazet’s shoulders lifted in a vague gesture that might have
signified ‘The devil of a lot,’ or, equally, ‘Well, what of it?’
Then he went back to the cupboard, fumbled in the pockets
of his tunic and walked up to Antoine.
‘As it so happens. I’ve a Swiss paper here — Goiran passed
it on to me. If we’re to believe the German communique, the
British had over two hundred thousand casualties in one month,
April, on the Yser front alone.’
‘The public in the allied countries,’ Bardot observed, ‘would
be rather startled if they heard those figures.’
Antoine nodded; Mazet broke into a loud guffaw, and, as
he went out of the room, flung over his shoulder :
‘Don’t worry! The public only knows what it’s allowed to
know. There’s a war on!’
He always gave the impression of regarding others as fools.
When he had left the room Bardot turned to Antoine.
‘Do you know what struck me this morning? That nowadays,
in every country, the government has ceased to be represen-
tative of public opinion. On neither side has anyone the least
idea of what the masses really are thinking ; the voices of the
rulers drown the voices of the ruled. Take France, for instance.
Do you think there’s one Frenchman in twenty at the front
817
SUMMER, 1914
who’s SO keen on Alsace and Lorraine that he’d willingly pro-
long the war for a single month, to get them back?’
‘Not one in fifty.’
‘And yet the whole world is firmly convinced that Clemenceau
and Poincare are the mouthpieces of public opinion in France !
This war has bred an atmosphere of lies, official lies, that’s
wholly without precedent. And it’s the same thing everywhere.
I wonder if there’ll ever come a time again when people are
allowed to say what they really think, if the European Press
will ever regain ’
He stopped short. Professor Segre had entered the room.
The Professor acknowledged the two doctors’ greetings with
a military salute. He shook Bardot’s hand, but not Antoine’s.
A dapper little man, with a tip-tilted chin, hook-nose, and
wig-like, fluffy white hair, he brought to mind certain cari-
catures of Monsieur Thiers. Obviously he devoted much care
to his clothes and personal appearance. Curt of speech, he was
polite but distant even with his colleagues. He kept severely
to himself and rarely left his private office, in which he even
took his meals. An indefatigable worker, he spent his days
writing articles on the clinical treatment of gas cases, for the
medical press, drawing his data from case-histories supplied
by Bardot and Mazet. His contacts with the patients were
limited to a greeting when the patient entered hospital and a
bedside visit if he took a sudden turn for the worse.
Antoine watched their receding forms, thinking: A good
sort, Bardot. It’s a stroke of luck for me, his being here.
He usually went back to his bedroom at that hour, to con-
tinue his treatment, and rest till noon. Often the morning
inhalation and breathing exercises left him so exhausted that
he dozed off in his arm-chair, and remained thus till the lun-
cheon gong woke him with a start.
He rose and followed the two doctors, at a few paces’ dis-
tance. Suddenly he thought : All the same, if it had been my
fate to die here, all the friendship of a chap like Bardot wouldn’t
have helped me in the least.
He walked slowly, husbanding his breath. He had two flights
of stairs to climb and if he failed to take the necessary pre-
818
EPILOGUE
cautions, the effort sometimes brought on a pain in his side,
not particularly acute, but lasting several hours before sub-
siding.
Joseph had forgotten again to draw the blind, with the result
that swarms of flies were buzzing round the shelves on which
he kept his medicines. A fly-flap hung on the wall, but Antoine
felt too limp to start a fly-swatting foray. Without a glance
for the entrancing scene which lay before his window, he pulled
down the blind, sank into his easy chair and closed his eyes
for a moment. Then, taking the telegram from his pocket, he
read it through again.
Well, she had lived her span out, poor old Mademoiselle,
and life held nothing more for her to do — but say good-bye
to it. What was it she used to say? T don’t want to be a drag
on anybody, now I’m too old to be of any use . . .’ And she
had set her mind on entering the Superannuates’ Home. That
was soon after Father’s death. In December 1913, or perhaps
January 1914. May 1918 now. What ages ago it seems! A
picture rose before him of the old lady : the little yellow forehead
framed in neat grey braids, the wizened, ivory-pale hands
trembling as she plied her knife and fork, the tiny eyes that
took on the expression of a startled llama, whenever someone
addressed her. She panicked at everything; a mouse in a cup-
board, a distant rumble of thunder, the news of a plague death
at Marseilles, of an earthquake shock in Sicily. A banging door
or an over-shrill ring at the bell made her gasp with fright.
‘Bless and save us I’ Then, awaiting the worst, she would fold
her skinny arms under the black silk cape she always called her
‘mantle.’ And that laugh of hers — for she was always laughing,
and often over the merest trifle — a tinkling, carefree laugh like
a young girl’s! . . .Yes, she must have been quite attractive
in her girlhood ; one could picture her playing battledore and
shuttlecock with her schoolmates at some provincial girls’ school,
a black velvet band round her neck, her long plaits neatly
gathered in a hair-net. What can her girlhood have been like?
he wondered. She never breathed a word about it. None of
us ever questioned her. I wonder what was her Christian name?
None of us knew it; to all intents and purposes it had ceased
819
SUMMER, 1914
to exist. In fact we didn’t refer to her by name at all; she was
just ‘Mademoiselle.’ Named after her functions — much as we
spoke of ‘the Concierge’ or, for that matter, ‘the lift.’ Father
inspired in her a sort of religious veneration, and for twenty
years without a break she put up with his tyranny. For twenty
years she went about her duties unnoticed, indefatigable, un-
heard. She was the driving force that kept our home going,
but no one ever gave her a word of thanks for her pains, and
her devotion to our welfare. Yes, she gave up her life to others ;
a life of modesty, self-denial, self-effacement ; and in her tactful,
timid way she loved us too — but how little love we gave her
in return !
‘Gise must be terribly upset about it,’ he said aloud.
He did not feel quite certain of this, but needed to convince
himself of it, invoking Gise’s grief to make amends for past
injustice.
This means, he thought. I’ll have to write a letter — hang
it ! (Once on active service, he had cut down his correspondence
to the strict minimum and, since his illness, had practically
given up letter- writing. Now and then, however, he sent a
brief postcard to Gise, Philip, Studler, or Jousselin.) Finally
he decided to despatch a long telegram at once; this would
give him a few days’ breathing-space before writing the inevit-
able letter. Suddenly he asked himself: ‘Why did she mention
the hour of the funeral? Surely she can’t have imagined I’d
go all the way to Paris to attend it?’
He had not set foot in Paris since the outbreak of war. There
seemed no point in going there now that all the people he
would have liked to meet again were mobilized, like himself
The idea of revisiting his empty flat, of wandering through his
closed and derelict laboratories, did not appeal to him. When-
ever his turn came for leave he had always made it over to
some brother-officer. At the front, anyhow, he was obliged to
lead a full and active life and it helped him to keep from
thinking. Only once, just before the Somme offensive, when
at Abbeville, had he brought himself to take a few days’ leave.
He had travelled to Dieppe and settled down by himself in
rooms there. But the atmosphere of this town, in which he had
820
EPILOGUE
nothing to do, what with the smell of fish and seawrack, the
never-ending drizzle, and the hordes of British wounded every-
where in evidence, had depressed him; after two days he had
had his fill of it, hurried to the station and rejoined his regiment.
Since the outbreak of the war he had not once seen Gise — or
Jenny, or Philip, or any companion of the old days. He had
not even allowed Gise to come and visit him at Saint-Dizier,
during his convalescence, after he had been wounded for the
first time. The affectionate but laconic notes she sent him every
two or three months enabled him to keep in contact, if only
vaguely and at second-hand, with the life of those behind the
lines and with his past.
It was by letter he had learned that Jenny was pregnant;
and by letter that the rumour of Jacques’ death had been
definitely confirmed. In the course of the winter of 1915 Jenny,
with whom he had already been in correspondence on fairly
intimate lines, had written to say she wanted to go to Geneva.
She gave two reasons for this desire : for one thing, she preferred
to be away from her family, by herself, when the child was
born; also, a stay in Switzerland would enable her to make
enquiries about Jacques’ death — the circumstances of which
still remained something of a mystery. Jenny had kept in touch
with the revolutionary group Jacques had frequented ; all they
could tell her was that rumour had it Jacques had disappeared
at the beginning of August when engaged on ‘a dangerous
mission.’
It had struck Antoine that Rumelles, who still held his post
in the Foreign Office, might be able to help, and he advised
Jenny to call at the Quai d’Orsay. Rumelles had not much
trouble in procuring for Jenny the necessary permit. At Geneva
Jenny had met Vanheede, and the little albino had helped her
in her quest. He had accompanied her to Basel and introduced
her to Plattner. Thus at last she had been able to obtain
first-hand news of Jacques’ last days. She was told about
the printing of the leaflet; how Jacques had gone to meet
Meynestrel on the hill-top, and they had taken off at daybreak
on August 10th and flown towards the Alsace front. There
Plattner’s information ended. But when Jenny had passed it on
821
SUMMER, 1914
to Antoine, he persuaded Rumelles to have enquiries made.
A scrutiny of the lists of prisoners in German camps drew
blank, but finally Rumelles unearthed a report in the records
of the War Office at Paris, emanating from the headquarters of
an infantry division operating in Alsace, and dated August loth.
The report in question dealt mainly with the French retreat
in Alsace, but contained a mention that a ’plane had fallen
in flames in the French lines. The pilot and his passenger had
perished in the fire and could not be identified. It had been
ascertained, on inspection of the wreckage, that the ’plane was
a civil machine of Swiss origin. The report added that a number
of bundles of charred paper had been found in the cockpit ;
from what could be deciphered on some sheets it was evident
that the ’plane had been loaded with propaganda of a violently
anti-militarist nature. There could be no doubt about it; the
bodies found were those of Jacques and his pilot. A futile end,
however one might look at it ! Antoine had never been able to
stomach its ineptitude, and even now, after a lapse of four years,
the thought of it outraged him even more than it distressed him.
Springing to his feet, he jerked the fly-flap off its hook, and
ragefully slaughtered a dozen flies; then began driving the
others out with his towel. But a sudden fit of coughing came over
him and he had to stop, bent almost double, resting both hands
on the back of the arm-chair. As soon as he could straighten
himself up, he steeped a compress in turpentine and applied
it to his chest. This gave him some relief; going to the bed,
he fetched two pillows and, putting them behind him, sat down
again. Sitting bolt upright to avoid hypostasis, he cautiously
began his breathing exercises, squeezing his larynx between
thumb and forefinger, and doing his best to emit perfectly clear
vowel sounds, sustaining them longer and longer at each
phonation.
‘A . . E . . . I . . . O . . . U . . .’
Meanwhile his eyes roved round the cell-like and blatantly
commonplace room. The walls were distempered a pale brick-
red that near the ceiling gave place to a frieze of brown con-
volvuli winding their futile way around the cornice. That
morning a sea-breeze was fluttering the blind and the walls
822
EPILOGUE
were dappled with glints of sunlight. Above the mirror some-
one had pinned a magazine picture showing a row of six
American beauty girls raising aloft six shapely legs with high-
arched insteps. It was the sole survivor of the numerous works
of art with which Antoine’s predecessor, shortly before his death,
had adorned the room. Antoine had succeeded in eliminating
the others, but the six high-kickers were out of reach and he did
not care to face the strain of trying to dislodge them. He had
often thought of getting Joseph, the room orderly, to remove
this final eyesore, but Joseph was short of stature and the step-
ladder was kept on the ground-floor; finally Antoine had
decided to ignore it. The small deal table was stacked with old
newspapers, war-maps, magazines and phonograph records,
wedged amongst which were a white china spittoon and an
array of medicine bottles and pill-boxes. When he sat down at
night to write up his case-history from observations noted in
the day, it was all he could do to find a place for the notebook.
The glass shelf above the wash-hand basin was equally encum-
bered with medicines. Between the table and the deal wardrobe
in which he kept his clothes and personal effects, an empty
medicine-chest stood upended with an inscription, still legible
though the letters had been almost rubbed away : Capt.
Thibault, M.O., 2nd Batt. It now served as stand for a decrepit
phonograph.
It would soon be nearly five months that Antoine had been
cribbed and confined within these brick-red walls, noting the
vicissitudes of his disease and watching in vain for definite
signs of improvement. Nearly five months he had suffered
in this room, counted the slow-paced hours, eaten and drunk
and coughed ; started reading books that he had never finished,
brooded on the past and toyed with future prospects, received
visitors, bandied jokes, argued about the war and the peace
to follow it until his breath gave out. That bed, that chair and
that spittoon — mute witnesses of his hours of fever, choking
fits and sleepless nights — how he had come to loathe them !
Happily he was still well enough to go downstairs fairly
often, and escape the boredom of this ugly little sick-room.
When he went down he usually took a book with him — not to
823
SUMMER, 1914
read, but to ensure a measure of solitude — and took cover in
the cypress avenue or the olive-grove ; sometimes he went as
far as the bottom of the vegetable garden, where there was
a Persian wheel, and the running water gave an illusion of
coolness in the air. At other times, when he felt up to keeping
on his feet, he would join Bardot and Mazet in the labora-
tory. The moment he had entered, he breathed a congenial
atmosphere. Bardot lent him a white coat, and welcomed his
collaboration. True, on leaving, he usually felt dead-beat,
but those hours in the laboratory were the high lights of his
present life.
If only he could have employed this enforced leisure, these
months of waiting for his health to mend, to some profit, with
a view to the future ! He had several times tried to start working
on his own account. But each time there had been a relapse,
compelling him to abandon the attempt before any real pro-
gress had been made. One project, especially, tempted him:
the idea of embodying in a monograph all the data he had
collected before the war on diseases of the respiratory system
in children, and their influence on mental development and
the power of attention. He had collected ample material for
a short book or, anyhow, a lengthy article in a technical review.
He was eager to get it out at the earliest opportunity, for the
subject was ‘in the air’ and Antoine ran the risk of being fore-
stalled by some other child-specialist. But even did his health
prove equal to this task, there was no possibility of tackling
it at once, as all his case-books and research-notes were in
Paris. And there was no way of getting them sent to him. His
young assistant, Manuel Roy, had -been reported missing, with
his entire section, after an attack near Arras in the second month
of the war. Jousselin had been taken prisoner in 1916 and was
now interned somewhere in Silesia. Wounded in the same year
at Verdun, the ‘Caliph’ had recovered, but his hearing had
been affected; he had specialized in X-ray work and been
recently posted to a hospital unit on the Eastern front.
The first clang of the gong announcing luncheon brought
him to his feet. He switched on the lamp above the wash-hand
basin and, opening his mouth, examined the back of his throat.
824
EPILOGUE
Before going down to meals he usually had to spray his throat
so as to make swallowing less painful ; some days, however, his
throat was so inflamed that he had to call on Bardot and have
it cauterized.
While waiting for the second gong to sound, he drew his
chair to the window and pulled up the blind. Facing him was
a wide expanse of cultivated fields, stepped in terraces along
a receding slope that ended on a rockbound summit; to his
right the undulating crest-line of the Riviera hills, veiled in
a shimmering heat-haze, rolled seawards to the blue horizon.
From the garden immediately below there drifted up a sound
of voices, the scent of flowers. Leaning out of the window, he
watched the patients strolling up and down the cypress avenue.
A familiar scene, familiar faces. There was Goiran with his
boon companion, Voisenet (they were the only patients who
had kept their vocal cords intact and they never stopped talking
from morn to night). That was Darras, a book as usual under
his arm ; the man beyond him was Eckmann, known as ‘Kan-
garoo’ ; just below the window was Major Reymond, sur-
rounded by a group of junior officers, at his usual morning
occupation of expounding the latest communique, with a map
spread out in front of him. As he watched them sauntering
to and fro, wagging their heads, gesticulating, he seemed to
hear each word that was uttered, and he felt almost as bored
as if he had been down there amongst them.
The gong boomed a second time and the whole garden woke
to feverish life, like a panicked anthill.
Antoine straightened up with a sigh. ‘That gong is really
too lugubrious for words. Why can’t they have an ordinary
dinner-bell?’
He was not feeling hungry, and really, he decided, it was
more than he could face, the prospect of tramping once again
down those two flights of stairs, of enduring the smell of food,
the noise and clatter, the promiscuity of the hospital mess.
To have to listen with an amiable smile to the eternal discussion
of Germany’s next move, forecasts of the war’s duration,
theories of the hidden meanings latent in the last communique
— all of it spiced with the same old feeble jokes, reminiscences
825
SUMMER, 1914
of the front, smutty stories, and, worst of all, naive revelations
of the amount of spitting indulged in during the night, or the
exact look of certain mucous surfaces.
About to change from his pyjama coat into an old white drill
tunic with three stripes on the sleeve, he took from his pocket
Gise’s wire, and suddenly stopped short.
‘Supposing I went there?’
He could not help smiling at the absurdity of the idea.
Obviously he would do nothing of the kind, and this assurance
left his imagination free to dally with the project, fantastic
though it was. Of course it was feasible enough, in itself. He
would have to take precautions and bring with him an inhaler
and his whole outfit of medicines, so as not to interrupt the
treatment. There would be no special risk of a relapse. ‘Funeral,
Sunday, ten o'clock.’’ If he took the afternoon express to-morrow,
Saturday, he would be in Paris Sunday morning. Segrc would
make no trouble about letting him go ; had he not given that
chap Drosse, ill though he was, a few days’ leave? A jaunt to
Paris was really rather tempting, now he came to think of it.
And its unexpectedness made it all the more alluring.
Suddenly he pictured himself as in pre-war days — in the
days when life was easy and his health intact — seated, silent
and alone, at a little table in the dining-car.
At Paris he would be able to consult his old chief Philip about
his health. And, better still, he could collect his case-histories,
and come back with a handbag full of files and reference-books,
which would enable him to set to work, to turn to some account
this irksome, never-ending convalescence.
Paris ! Two or three days’ escape from durance, two or three
days without the daily promiscuity of the mess.
After all — why not?
826
EPILOGUE
2
^Mademoiselle’s^ Funeral
There was a click, and the little window in the porter’s lodge
opened a cautious inch. Antoine had a brief glimpse of a blue
canvas sleeve, a wizened hand, the flash of a gold ring. From
her dim retreat the Gate Sister’s voice came to him, mumbling :
‘Straight in front of you, sir, at the end of the passage, in
the courtyard.’
A bare, tiled corridor, spotlessly clean, led off the entrance-
hall into the silent depths of the main building. On entering
the corridor, Antoine noticed on his left two old women with
black crochet-work shawls wrapped round their shoulders,
squatting on the lowest step of a staircase; bending towards
each other, whispering in each other’s ears, they brought to
mind a pair of aged actresses playing the role of Gossips.
Bathed on three sides in sunlight, the courtyard was empty.
A chapel occupied the entire length of the farther side ; one of
the doors stood open on a shadowy interior from which issued
the strains of a harmonium. Evidently the service had begun.
Antoine went up to the door. As his eyes got used to the dark-
ness, he made out a cluster of tiny candle-flames. The floor of
the chapel was lower than the courtyard and he had to go down
two steps on entering. Cautiously he groped his way between
a group of undertaker’s men waiting in the aisle. There seemed
to be a large congregation in the little nave, the atmosphere
of which was dank as in a crypt. Resting one hand on the holy-
water stoup, Antoine shored himself up on tip-toe and gazed
towards the bier, which was loosely draped in black with four
candles at the corners. Standing behind the humble catafalque
was a little old white-haired, bespectacled man, with his arms
folded; beside him knelt a hospital nurse, her face hidden by
a blue veil. When she turned her head, Antoine recognized
Gise. ‘So the poor old thing had no other relative, no friends,’
he mused. ‘No one except that old idiot Chasle. It’s a good
thing I came. Jenny’s not here; nor’s Madame de Fontanin,
827
SUMMER, 1914
nor Daniel. All the better. I’ll ask Gise not to tell them that
I’m here; that will spare me a journey to Maisons-Laffitte.’
He cast a final glance of inspection along the half-dozen rows
of tightly packed pews. No, there was no one he knew in any
of them ; only old women in shawls and a few nuns with broad-
winged coifs. ‘I’ll never be able to keep standing till the end.
Not to mention that it’s rather cold in here.’ As he turned to
leave the chapel, there was a rustle, a creaking of pews; the
congregation was settling down to kneel. The officiating priest
turned, raising his hands, towards the aisle. Antoine recognized
the tall, spare form, the bald, domed forehead ; it was the Abbe
Vecard.
He walked up the steps again and out into the courtyard.
Noticing a bench in the sun, he sat down. There was a dull
ache between his shoulder blades. Still, the long railway journey
had not tired him as much as might have been expected; it
had been possible to lie down most of the night. It was the
trip from the Gare de Lyon to the Home in an aged taxi,
bumping along the cobbled roads beside the Seine, that had
been too much for him.
‘A tiny coffin,’ he thought. ‘No bigger than.a child’s.’ Pictures
took form before his eyes of Mademoiselle pattering briskly
to and fro in his father’s flat or seated in her room, perched
on the edge of a high chair facing the window at the marqueterie
writing-desk — her ‘family heirloom’ as she called it — which was
the only personal effect she brought with her when she came
to keep house for M. Thibault. It had a secret drawer in which
she kept the money for the household expenses ; in it she pre-
served her sentimental relics, hoarded her savings. She had
special compartments for bills, for her notepaper and her box
of vanilla; drawers in which she heaped up the pencil-stubs
discarded by M. Thibault, leaflets and prescriptions, her needles
and thread, her buttons, her tin of rat-poison, her sticking-
plaster, sachets of iris petals and tincture of arnica, all the old
house-keys, prayer-books and photos, the cucumber lotion she
used to soften her hands and the rather sickly smell of which,
mingling with that of the vanilla and the sachets, drifted out
into the hall whenever her door was opened. For Antoine and
828
EPILOGUE
Jacques, when they were little, Mademoiselle’s escritoire had
had the glamour of a fairy treasure-hoard. Later on Jacques
and Gise had nicknamed it The Village Post-Office for its
resemblance to those little country post-offices where trumpery
odds and ends of every sort are sold.
A sound of heavy footfalls made him look up. The men in
black had opened the second half of the door and were laying
out the wreaths on the ground, in the courtyard. Antoine rose.
The service was ending. Two white-aproned nuns towing
at their heels a large wheeled basket laden with vegetables
passed by with lowered eyes and hastily swerved off into one
of the buildings. On the first floor the blinds were being drawn
up and decrepit old women in dressing-jackets gathering around
the windows. Such of the old people as were able to hobble
about had attended the service ; they now came out and formed
up in groups on either side of the porch. The harmonium had
ceased playing. From the darkness emerged a silver cross, a
surplice, then the bier carried by two men. Some choir-boys
followed, then an old priest and, after him, the Abbe Vecard.
At last Gise walked up the steps and out into the light.
M. Chasle was behind her. The bearers halted to enable the
undertaker’s men to put back the wreaths on the coffin. Gise’s
eyes, dim with tears, were fixed on the bier. Antoine was struck
by the look of maturity on her face, seen thus in pensive con-
templation ; for somehow his memories of her had crystallized
round the little fifteen-year-old girl of long ago. He guessed she
had not seen him, had not dreamed he would attend the funeral,
and the thought that he was thus observing her unaware made
him feel a shade embarrassed. He had forgotten that her skin
was so dark a brown. It must be the white band across her
forehead, he supposed, that made her complexion seem so much
darker.
M. Chasle was wearing black gloves and carrying a top-hat
of an obsolete pattern. He was craning his neck and twisting
his little birdlike head this side and that. Suddenly his gaze lit
on Antoine and his hand went to his mouth as if to check an
exclamation. Gise looked round and she too saw Antoine, but
for the first two seconds did not seem to have recognized him.
829
SUMMER, 1914
Then she ran forward, bursting into tears, and flung herself
into his arms. He kissed her, rather awkwardly, Noticing that
the bearers had started off again, he gently freed himself from
her embrace.
‘Keep beside me,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Antoine dear.’
She went back to her place behind the bier. He followed her.
M. Chasle watched them approach with startled eyes.
‘Ah, so it’s you,’ he muttered, as if lost in dreams, when
Antoine held out his hand to him.
‘Is the cemetery far?’ Antoine asked Gise.
‘Our vault is at Levallois,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ve
arranged for carriages.’
The little procession slowly crossed the courtyard.
A hearse drawn by a pair of horses was standing at the gate ;
neighbours and some children had lined up in two rows across
the pavement. Superposed on the roof of the antiquated
vehicle, like a howdah on an elephant’s back, was a small
coupe for the principal mourners. A ladder clamped to the
side led up to it. There was sitting-room for three only, and
these three places were bespoken for Gise, M. Chasle and the
man in charge of the funeral arrangements*. The last-named,
however, waived his privilege in Antoine’s favour and climbed
into the seat beside the driver. The hearse moved off at walking
pace, creaking and rumbling on the rough cobbles. The two
priests followed in a mourning cab.
The effort of scrambling up the ladder to his place had
irritated Antoine’s lungs. No sooner was he seated than a fit
of coughing came over him; for some minutes he stayed
doubled up, his handkerchief pressed to his lips.
Gise was sitting between the two men. When Antoine’s
coughing fit had passed, she touched his arm.
‘It was nice of you to come. I didn’t dare to expect it.’
‘Ah, but one has to be prepared for anything these days !’
sighed M. Chasle sententiously. He had perked his head forward
to watch Antoine coughing and was still eyeing him over his
glasses. ‘Excuse me,’ he added, wagging his head, ‘if I didn’t
recognize you at once just now. But you’re not looking yourself,
if I may say so. Don’t you agree, Miss Gise?’
830
EPILOGUE
The remark produced a disagreeable impression on Antoine,
but he put a good face on it.
‘Yes, that’s so. I’ve lost quite a lot of weight. The effects
of yperite, you know.’
Gise turned abruptly, startled by the sepulchral voice. Just
now, in the courtyard, she had been somewhat perturbed by
Antoine’s general appearance, but had not given it close atten-
tion. After all it was not surprising that he should seem con-
siderably changed after five years’ absence, especially as she
was seeing him in uniform for the first time. Now, however, it
crossed her mind that he might be more seriously ill than she
had imagined. She knew he had been gassed but had heard
no details. All he had told her was that he was under treatment
in the Riviera and ‘on the road to recovery.’
‘Yperite — just so !’ M. Chasle echoed with an air of pleased
omniscience. ‘Ypres gas, that is. Or mustard gas some people
call it. One of these modern discoveries.’ He was still gazing
at Antoine with rapt attention. ‘It’s thinned you out a bit, the
gas. But I see it brought you in the Distinguished Service Medal.
With two bars, if my eyes do not deceive me. A glorious
award.’
Gise glanced at Antoine’s tunic. He had not written a word
about these distinctions in his letters.
‘What do the doctors say?’ Gise ventured to ask. ‘Do they
think you’ll have to stay much longer in hospital?’
‘Well, my progress isn’t exactly rapid,’ Antoine admitted
with a forlorn smile. He wanted to add something, and took a
deep breath, but gave it up. The horses had broken into a trot,
and the Jolts made breathing difficult.
‘At our Inventors’ Mart,’ M. Chasle put in, with a would-be
engaging grin, ‘you can buy everything that’s needed, including
gas masks, needless to say.’
Gise turned to the old man and enquired amiably :
‘How’s your business doing? Well, I hope.’
‘Not too badly, not too badly. Like everybody else these
days, we’re carrying on. One’s got to move with the times, eh?
All our best inventors have been snapped up for the front, of
course, and it’s no good expecting any useful work from them
831
SUMMER, 1914
while they’re there. Now and then one of them has an inspira-
tion, though. The thing we’ve just launched for instance. A
bomb-proof Crown-and-Anchor board. Fitting into the pocket.
Just the thing for the trenches. . . .Yes, one’s got to move with
the limes. Miss Gise.’
Antoine smiled to himself: You, anyhow, haven’t changed.
The hearse had entered the spacious boulevards that follow
the line of the old Paris fortifications. There was a foretaste of
summer in the bright, sunny air. Soldiers in uniform were
sauntering on the grassy ramparts, and at the Porte Dauphine
Parisiennes in summery frocks, with children or dogs in tow,
were making their way towards the Bois. Along the pavements
hawkers’ barrows were drawn up, piled high with flowers. Just
as in the past.
‘What exactly did — did Mademoiselle — die of?’
Antoine brought out the words with difficulty across the
jolting of the vehicle.
Gise turned to him, all eagerness to explain.
‘What did she die of, poor auntie? Nothing in particular.
The works had run down, as they say. Heart, kidneys, stomach,
everything. She’d been unable to digest any food for weeks.
Then, on the last night, her heart failed suddenly.’ She fell
silent for a while. Then, ‘You can’t imagine,’ she continued,
‘how her character had changed since she’d entered the Home.
She thought of nothing but herself, her diet, her comfort, her
savings — and she bullied the servants and the nuns. Would you
ever have believed it of her! She grumbled at everything,
thought she was being persecuted. She even accused the old
woman in the next room of stealing her things; there was a
dreadful to-do about it. She used to stay whole days without
drinking ; she’d got it into her head that the Sisters were trying
to poison her.’
Again she paused. She could not understand Antoine’s silence
and took it for a veiled reproach. For during the last few days
Gise had been plaguing herself with scruples, wondering if she
had done for her aunt all that she should have done. ‘After all,’
she had told herself, ‘I owe everything to Auntie, she brought
me up — and then, the moment I was able to turn my back
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EPILOGUE
on her, I did so ! And I hardly ever went to visit her at the
Home.’
She began speaking again, raising her voice a little, as if
pleading her cause against an accusation.
‘You know, our hospital work at Maisons keeps us busy all
the time. It was awfully hard for me to get an afternoon off to
go and see her. These last months were the worst ; I let a long
time go by without looking her up. Then the Mother Superior
wrote a letter, and I went at once. I’ll never forget it, never!
I found poor auntie in the little dressing-room where she kept
her clothes; she was sitting on a trunk, in her chemise and
petticoat, one stocking on, and one leg bare. She was like a
skeleton already; her cheeks had fallen in, and her neck was
just skin and bones. But the amazing thing was that her legs
had somehow kept quite young, like the legs of a little girl. She
didn’t ask me any news about myself or anyone else, but began
at once complaining about her neighbours and the Sisters. Then
she went up to that old desk of hers — do you remember it? —
and opened a drawer where she kept her savings. “That’s to
pay for the attendance,” she said. Then she began talking about
her funeral. “You’ll never see me again. I shall be dead when
you come next.” Then she said, “But you needn’t fret, my dear ;
I’ll tell the Mother Superior to send you your Christmas pre-
sent, just the same.” I tried to turn it off. “You’ve been saying
that for years, auntie,” I told her; “that you were going to
die.” She got quite angry. “I tell you, I want to die. Living
makes me so dreadfully tired.” All of a sudden she looked at
her bare leg. “Isn’t that a pretty foot now? You’re different,
you’ve always had such ugly feet, like a boy’s.” When I was
leaving, I tried to kiss her but she wouldn’t let me. “No, don’t
kiss me. I smell horrid; I smell oldV' It was then she mentioned
you. As I was going out, she called me back. “Do you know,
I’ve lost six teeth! I pulled them out — plop! — like radishes.”
And she started laughing quite cheerfully — you remember that
tinkly little laugh she had? “Six teeth,” she said. “Mind you
let Antoine know. And tell him to hurry up, if he wants to see
me again, alive.” ’
Antoine listened, not without emotion. Stories of illnesses and
833 EE
SUMMER, 1914
death had come to interest him. Gise’s chatter, moreover, dis-
pensed him from the necessity of talking.
‘Was that your last visit?’
‘No. I went there again ten days ago. They’d written to tell
me the priest had given her the sacrament. The room was in
darkness; she couldn’t bear light any more. Sister Marthe led
me to the bed. My aunt lay curled up under the counterpane,
looking tinier than ever. The Sister tried to rouse her. “Here’s
your little niece come to see you.” At last there was a move-
ment on the bed. I don’t know if she understood, or if she
recognized me. But she said quite clearly, “It’s a long, long
business!” Then, “What’s the latest news about the war?” I
spoke to her, but she didn’t answer, didn’t seem to understand.
She broke in several times while I was speaking. “Well? What’s
the news?” When I wanted to kiss her forehead, she pushed
me away. “No, my dear, I won’t have my hair ruffled.”
Poor auntie 1 That’s the last thing I heard her say : “I won’t
have my hair ruffled.” ’
M. Chasle dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief. Then, after
carefully refolding it along the creases, he muttered, in a dis-
approving tone :
‘That’s so. It wouldn’t have done, it wouldn’t have done
at all to untidy her hair.’
Gise looked down quickly, a young, mischievous, if quite
involuntary smile flickering on her lips. Antoine had a glimpse
of it, and suddenly Gise seemed much nearer to him, and he
caught himself wanting to tease her, to call her ‘Blackie’ as in
the past.
The hearse pulled up at the Porte Champerret for the for-
malities. On the square were anti-aircraft guns in position,
a motorized machine-gun unit, and searchlights wrapped in
camouflaged tarpaulins, guarded by sentries.
After a short wait the hearse moved on again. While they
were passing through the crowded streets of the Levallois
suburb, M. Chasle heaved a sigh.
‘Yes, you may say what you like but poor dear Mademoiselle
had a happy life at the Superannuates’ Home. That’s what
I’m looking for. Monsieur Antoine, a Home like that for men,
834
EPILOGUE
but nicely appointed, as they say. There anyhow, one would
have some peace, one wouldn’t have to worry about what’s
happening.’ He took off his glasses, and wiped them. His eyes,
seen thus without the glasses, had a gentle, tremulous, rather
pathetic expression. ‘I’d make over to them the pension your
late esteemed father left me,’ he continued, ‘and I’d feel shel-
tered ... for my last years. I’d be able to sleep late of the
mornings, and think about myself a bit. I visited a men’s home
at Lagny, but it’s too far east of Paris, for these times. One can
never take too much care, with those Boches about, can one?
I had a look at their cellars ; they weren’t what I’d call proper
cellars. Much too flimsy for these times.’ Each time he said
‘these times,’ a nervous tremor shook his voice and he gestured,
as if to ward off an evil portent, with his black-gloved hands.
They were suede gloves, shabby and much too long for him,
with the finger-ends crinkling and curled into unsightly bobs
like winkle-shells.
Antoine and Gise kept silence. They no longer felt any in-
clination to smile.
‘Everything’s so unsettled,’ the old fellow went on plain-
tively. ‘One’s never easy in one’s mind nowadays. The only time
one feels really safe is on air-raid nights, when one’s got a real
cellar to go down to. The one I use, in the house opposite mine
— Number 19 — now that’s what I call a real cellar.’ He waited
for a coughing fit which had come over Antoine to subside,
then added : ‘Those nights in the cellar — well, in these times,
they’re about the best thing one has.’
The horses had dropped into a walk; a high wall flanking
the roadway came into view.
‘This must be it,’ Gise said.
‘Where are you going afterwards?’ Antoine asked; he was
buttressing his shoulders against the back of the seat with all
his might to counteract the jolts of the ramshackle old vehicle,
which gave him constant twinges in his side.
‘I’m going to the Rue de I’Universite; to your place. I’ve
been sleeping there the last two nights. The hearse is bringing
me back; it’s included in the undertaker’s fee.’
‘I think we’ll try and find a comfortable taxi, instead,’
835
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine smiled. Ever since taking his place in the howdah-like
contraption on the roof, he had been suffering as much from
apprehensions of the moment when he would have to climb
down from it as from its immediate discomfort. And he had
made his mind up to use another conveyance for the return
journey.
Gise shot him a puzzled glance, but made no comment. In
any case the hearse had reached the cemetery gates and was
just turning in.
3
Antoine Revisits His Old Home
‘T H E Y ’ v E all taken nicely. You’ll let them stay ten minutes,
won’t you?’
‘Twenty, if you like.’
With eight cupping-glasses stuck on his bare back, Antoine
was sitting astride a chair in his little study.
‘Just a moment,’ Gise said. ‘I mustn’t let you catch cold.’
She had dropped her nurse’s cape over the back of a chair.
Now she went and fetched it, and wrapped it round Antoine’s
shoulders.
He thought : How kind she is, and gentle ! And was greatly
moved by the discovery that the old affection still glowed warm
as ever in his heart. Why have I kept her at arm’s length all
these years? Why didn’t I write to her? And suddenly the
hideous pink bedroom at Le Mousquier came back to his mind ;
the six beauty girls high-kicking above the mirror, the dreary
meals, Joseph’s clumsy, if well-meaning, attentions. How
pleasant it would be to stay here, with Gise to look after him !
‘I’ll leave the door open,’ she said, ‘so you can call me if
you want anything. Now I’m off to the kitchen. Messtime!’
‘ “Messtime I” ’ he groaned. ‘You might have spared me
836
EPILOGUE
that, Gise. After these last four years, I hate the very sound
of the word !’
Laughing, she ran out of the room.
Left to himself, he gave his mind up to the pleasure of home-
life regained, to his dream of a gentle, affectionate companion
nursing him back to health.
And now again he grew conscious of the smell. He had
noticed it first on entering, as he crossed the hall and, auto-
matically, hung his kepi on the hat-peg left of the door, where
he always hung his hat in former days. He sniffed it eagerly;
it seemed as if he could never glut his nostrils with that charac-
teristic odour of his home, forgotten, but so quickly recognized
— a vague aroma that emanated from the carpets, curtains,
books, upholstery, and subtly permeated all the air in the flat ;
a curious, indefinable blend of diverse smells: of cloth and
furniture-polish, of leather, tobacco-smoke and chemicals.
The journey back from the cemetery (with a detour to the
Gare de Lyon to pick up his valise at the cloak-room) had
seemed interminable. The pain in his side had grown worse
and the oppression on his chest redoubled. Indeed, on alighting
from the taxi at his door, he had felt so ill that he had damned
himself for a fool to have risked this trip to Paris. Luckily he
had with him all that was necessary and had promptly given
himself an injection of oxygen that had reduced the dyspnoea.
Then under his instructions Gise had applied cupping-glasses ;
they were beginning to take effect, and already his lungs were
getting less congested and it was easier to breathe.
Stooping forward, unmoving, his back taut and his lean arms
crossed on the back of the chair, he contemplated his sur-
roundings with an almost sentimental eye. He had never
imagined he would be so much moved by the sight of his old
home, his study. Nothing had changed. Gise had promptly
whisked the dust-covers off the furniture, put the chairs in their
usual places, opened the shutters and let the blind down half-
way. Nothing had changed, yet everything seemed oddly un-
expected. This little ‘den’ of his, in which he had used to spend
so much of his time, was at once familiar and unlooked-for,
like those memories of childhood which flash up in our minds
837
SUMMER, 1914
with a breath-taking vividness and precision after being lost
in complete oblivion for many years. In mild amazement his
eyes roved the deep-piled brown carpet, the leather arm-chairs,
the sofa and its cushions, the fireplace and its clock, the wall-
lamps and book-shelves. ‘Is it possible I once devoted so much
time and thought to the furnishing of this room?’ he murmured
incredulously. He could name the exact title of each of those
books — to which assuredly he had not given a thought during
the past four years — as promptly as if he had been handling
it yesterday. Each article of furniture, every object — that small
round table, that tortoiseshell paperknife, the brass ash-tray
with the dragon stamped on it, the cigarette-box — evoked some
definite association, some incident of his life : the time and place
of buying it, the gratitude of a patient, each phase of whose
illness he could still recall, one of Anne’s gestures, a remark
of the Caliph’s, a memory of his father. For the little study
had once been M. Thibault’s dressing-room. He had only to
shut his eyes to see again the big mahogany washhand-stand,
the mirror- wardrobe, the copper footbath, the bootjack that
used to stand in the corner. Almost, indeed, it would have
given him less surprise to have found this room exactly as he
had known it in his childhood, than as he saw it now — as he
himself had refashioned it.
‘Odd !’ he murmured. ‘I’d the same feeling just now when
I was at the front door — of entering not my own place, but
Father’s !’
He opened his eyes again, and his gaze lit on the telephone
placed upon a low table by the sofa. And, in a flash, memory
had cast across the screen a picture of the hale, vigorous young
man who had so often used that telephone; a man proud of
his never-flagging energy ; authoritative, rejoicing in his
strength. Between that young man and his present self lay four
years of war, four years of sombre musings and revolt, ending
on these last black months of physical pain and breakdown,
the premature decrepitude which forced itself upon his notice
at every turn. A rush of disheartenment came over him, he
buried his face in his arms, ^e saw the past now bathed in
roseate light, the glamour of youth and health. Ah, what would
838
EPILOGUE
he not have given to retrieve the atmosphere of that bygone
family life, that lost serenity ! His father, Jacques, Mademoiselle
— all were gone; and regret for the days that were no more
made to-day’s lot seem drearier still. He was on the brink of
calling Gise to help him escape from himself. . . . With an
effort he pulled himself together. Yes, he must face up to the
facts. Really, it was all a question of health. The first thing
was to get well again. He resolved, at the earliest opportunity,
to have a serious consultation with his old teacher. Dr. Philip,
and with his aid to draw up plans for a more rapid and drastic
treatment. In the long run, the treatment he was following at
Le Mousquier was probably debilitating ; it was abnormal that
he should have lost so much strength. Philip would put him
in the way of regaining it. Philip . . . Gise. Why not bring Gise
back with him to Le Mousquier? Yes, then he would . . . get
well ... be fit again. . . . Suddenly his eyes closed, he fell
asleep.
When he awoke a few minutes later, Gise, perched on the
arm of an easy chair, was gazing at him. Her brows were
knitted with the intensity of her gaze, and there was a shade
of anxiety in it. She had never been able to control her face
so as to hide her thoughts, and Antoine read them now quite
easily.
T’m looking rather a wreck, eh?’
‘No, but thinner.’
‘Yes, I’ve lost nineteen pounds since last autumn.’
‘Feeling easier in your chest, I hope?’
‘Much easier, thanks.’
‘Your voice is still a bit . . . husky.’ (Of the change that had
come over Antoine, what had impressed her most was the
extreme weakness of his voice, and its hoarseness.)
‘Just now it’s nothing. There are times, especially in the
mornings, when I lose my voice altogether.’
There was a short silence ; then she slipped off the chair on
to her feet, saying :
‘I’ll take them off now, if you like.’
‘Right you are.’
Drawing up a chair, she sat down behind him, and, slipping
839
SUMMER, 1914
her hands under the cape so that he should not catch a chill,
began detaching the cupping-glasses with infinite precautions
from his back, placing each, as it came off, in her lap. Then
gathering up the corners of her apron, she carried them away
to the kitchen, to rinse them out.
Antoine stood up. He noticed that he was breathing much
more freely. After scrutinizing in the glass his lean back mottled
with violet rings, he dressed again.
Gise had just finished laying the table when he entered the
dining-room.
His eyes roved its uncompanionable vastness, the twenty
chairs aligned along the wall, the marble-topped sideboard at
which Lton had officiated in bygone days. Then he said ;
‘When the war’s over, Gise, I’m going to sell this place.’
She turned and stared at him amazedly, forgetting to put
down the plate she had in her hand.
‘What? Sell the house?’
‘Yes, and I don’t want to keep anything that’s here. Not
a thing. I’ll take a little flat, something simple, easy to run.
I’ll . . .’
He paused, smiling at himself He had no .very clear ideas
of what he meant to do; but of one thing he was sure. This
morning he had changed his plans for good and all ; nothing
would induce him to resume his pre-war life.
‘Here’s the menu ! Veal collops with macaroni and butter
sauce, and strawberries. That do you all right?’ she asked,
giving up trying to understand why Antoine should have
formed this sudden aversion for a home arranged meticulously
to his liking. (In any case, she had little imagination and rarely
took much interest in future plans.)
‘You’re a dear, giving yourself all this trouble,’ he exclaimed
as his eyes fell on the trimly laid table.
‘You’ll have to give me another ten minutes. . . . Oh, and
I couldn’t find the napkins.’
‘I’ll have a hunt for them.’
A folding bed occupied most of the narrow space in the linen
room. It had been slept in, and he saw a little bunch of rosaries
curled on the unmade sheets. Some garments lay on a chair.
840
EPILOGUE
‘Now why didn’t she use the bedroom at the end of the
hall?’ he wondered.
He opened a cupboard, a second and a third one. All were
filled with brand-new linen : sheets, pillow-cases, bath-robes,
aprons, and dusters tied up in dozens with the price-tickets still
on them. ‘Absurd, having all that stuff! I’ll have it auctioned
off, except what’s indispensable.’ He drew towards him a
bundle of napkins and took out two of them. Of a sudden he
thought: ‘I’ve got it! She didn’t want to sleep in Jacques’ old
room, that’s why she put the bed in here.’
He sauntered back along the passage, running his fingers
over the paintwork of the walls, turning the handles of the doors
he passed and peeping into rooms, as if he were on a visit of
inspection in a stranger’s flat.
Back in the hall, he paused for a moment outside the double
doors of his consulting-room. He felt a curious reluctance about
entering it. At last he turned the handle and went in. The
Venetian blinds were down. The furniture, swathed in dust-
sheets, had been pushed back against the book-shelves and the
room seemed larger than ever. Filtering between the slats of the
blinds the sunlight filled the room with a discreet radiance like
that prevailing in big provincial drawing-rooms, unused save
on at-home days.
And suddenly he recalled those last weeks of July, 1914, the
newspapers Studler used to bring back by the dozen, their
arguments, the nerve-racking suspense. And his brother’s visits.
Wasn’t it here that Jacques had come, with Jenny, on the very
day that mobilization was announced?
His back against the door-jamb, leaning a little forward, he
lightly sniffed the air, as if to test its savour. Yes, that charac-
teristic scent was here — but somehow fresher, more pungent
than elsewhere ; and a little different too, more aromatic. The
big writing-desk, sheeted and forlorn in the middle of the room,
had the look of a child’s catafalque.
What on earth can they have stowed away under that sheet?
he wondered and, stepping forward, drew it aside.
The desk was stacked with a miscellaneous assortment of
envelopes and packages that had come through the post. From
841 EE*
SUMMER, 1914
the start of the war the concierge had made a habit of placing
on it all the printed matter addressed to Antoine : prospectuses,
newspapers, packets of samples sent by manufacturing chemists.
‘Now, what’s that smell?’ he asked himself again. For with the
familiar odour of the room there mingled here a tang of some
unusual, strongly aromatic perfume.
Mechanically, he slipped the wrapper off a medical review
and ran his eyes through the contents. Then abruptly, out of
the blue, a thought flashed into his mind — of Rachel. ‘That’s
odd,’ he mused. ‘Why should I think of Rachel here, instead
of Anne?’ Rachel had never crossed the threshold of this house
and he had not given a thought to her existence for ages.
‘What can have become of her? I wonder where she is now.
Somewhere in the tropics, most likely, with that fellow Hirsch,
thousands of miles from Europe and the war.’ He picked out
some medical journals to take with him to Le Mousquier,
glanced at the tables of contents, and tossed them on to the
mantelpiece. ‘The only doctors contributing to these journals
nowadays are the old stagers, the ones who’ve stayed behind.
This war’s been a godsend for them. They’ve been able to
“place” all the old manuscripts mouldering in their drawers.’
Now and then however, he noticed, a younger man found time
to contribute a brief report of some unusual case. ‘Surgery has
made enormous strides ; that’s the one good thing this war has
done.’ He continued foraging in the heap of periodicals, tossing
now and again one of them on to the mantelpiece. ‘If only
I could settle down to my monograph on infantile affections
of the lungs ! Sebillon would certainly take it for his Review.’
A packet covered with gaudy foreign postage-stamps caught
his eye. He picked it up, then promptly lifted it to his nose, his
curiosity whetted once again by the odd, aromatic smell he
had noticed on entering the room. Still sniffing, he examined
the name of the sender, noted on a corner of the wrapper:
Mile. Bonnet, General Hospital, Konakri, French Guinea. The stamps
were postmarked March, 1915. Three years old. Greatly puzzled,
he turned the little package over and over in his hand. What
could it be? A medicine? A perfume? Cutting the string he
stripped off the wrappings. Inside was a red- wood box, nailed
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EPILOGUE
down on all sides. ‘A bit of a job opening it,’ he murmured,
and glanced round the room for something he could use to
prise the lid off. Nothing suitable presenting itself, he was in
half a mind to leave his curiosity ungratified, when suddenly
he remembered he had his army knife in his pocket. Slipping
the blade between two nails, with a slight pressure he had the
lid off. A waft of aromatic perfume floated up ; it seemed some-
how familiar, that blend of incense with some pungent oriental
gum, yet he could not identify it. Delicately, with the tip of
his nail he stroked aside the layer of sawdust; some small
yellowish, egg-like objects came into view, dully glowing
through a film of dust. And suddenly the past had risen before
his eyes, vivid as reality — those were Rachel’s beads, her neck-
lace of honey-golden amber set with tiny rings of ambergris
between the beads. He lifted it from the box and carefully
wiped the dust off. His eyes grew misted as memory lit up
facets of the past. The silken whiteness of her breast, a
glimmer of red-gold hair. And then — Havre, their parting, the
Romania putting out to sea at daybreak. But why had she sent
the necklace? Who was this Mile. Bonnet? What was the
meaning of it all?
Hearing footsteps in the passage, he quickly slipped the neck-
lace into his pocket.
Gise had come to summon him to luncheon. On the threshold
she paused and sniffed.
‘What a funny smell !’
He drew back the dust-sheet over the papers and packages
littering the desk.
‘They’ve used it as a dump for the patent-medicines that
came in while I was away.’
‘Lunch is ready. Are you coming?’
He followed her out of the room. His right hand was thrust
in his pocket and, as he felt the beads growing warm against
his palm, a picture hovered before him of lithe white limbs,
a glimmer of ruddy gold.
843
SUMMER, 1914
4
Gise Confides in Antoine
Once they were seated side by side at an end of the big table,
Gise turned to Antoine with a resolute air.
‘Now I want you to tell me all about your health; exactly
how you stand.’
Antoine made a grimace. Actually he was more than willing
to talk about himself, his illness and its treatment ; but it gave
him a certain pleasure to be coaxed, and he parried her first
questions with a show of reluctance. He soon realized that these
questions were far from being inept. His little Gise, it seemed,
whom he had always been inclined to treat as a mere child,
had turned her three years’ hospital experience to good account.
He could now ‘talk shop’ with her, in fact. Another link between
them. The interest she displayed encouraged him to give an
outline of his illness, with a detailed description of its various
phases during the last few months. Had she shown any tendency
to treat his diagnosis lightly or turn it off with vaguely com-
forting remarks, he would have purposely exaggerated his
apprehensions. But, as she listened, her expression was so
earnest, there was such deep and anxious interest in her gaze, that
he took the opposite course and wound up on an optimistic note.
‘All things considered, then, I shall pull through.’ (Of this
indeed, in his heart of hearts, he was convinced.) ‘It may take
some time,’ he added with a confident smile, ‘but there can be
no doubt I shall recover. The only thing that worries me is
whether my recovery will be complete. Suppose my larynx re-
mains impaired, or my vocal chords don’t get back their
strength, shall I be able to take up my practice again? I can’t
be satisfied, you know, with the mere prospect of a reasonably
long life. I’ve no use for a life in which I’m only the shadow of
my former self. I want to feel assured I’ll get back the physical
fitness I had before the war. And that’s another story.’
She had stopped eating so as to give her whole attention to
what he said, and the big, candid, wondering eyes intent on
EPILOGUE
him glowed with a childlike devotion that brought to mind the
gaze of certain unspoilt savage races. And this affectionate
concern of hers, after so many years’ privation, was doubly
sweet to him. He gave a short, confident laugh.
‘Less sure, I grant, but not impossible. Very few things are
impossible, if one refuses to be beaten. So far I’ve always
brought off everything I really set my mind on. Why
shouldn’t I do so now? I’m determined to get well; I shall
get well.’
He had forced his voice for the last remark ; a prolonged and
violet fit of coughing prevented him from continuing. Bending
over her plate, Gise watched him furtively, trying to reassure
herself. After all, she reflected, what Antoine wants he always
gets, and he’ll manage to cure himself — somehow.
When the coughing fit had passed she turned towards him.
He made a gesture to indicate that he would rather not speak
again for a while.
‘Drink some water,’ she said, filling his glass. Then, unable
to repress the question which was hovering on her lips, she
asked : ‘How many days will you be staying here?’
He made no reply. It was a topic he would have preferred to
shun. Actually, he had been given four days’ leave. But he pro-
posed to abridge it ; the prospect of remaining three more days
in Paris, unable to continue his regular treatment and with the
constant risk of overtiring himself, did not appeal to him.
‘How long?’ she insisted. ‘A week? Five or six days?’
He shook his head, took a deep breath, then smiled :
‘I’m going back to-morrow.’
‘To-morrow !’ Her tone betrayed her disappointment. ‘Then
you won’t come to see us at Maisons-Laffitte?’
‘Can’t be done, my dear, I’m afraid. Not this trip anyhow.
Later on, perhaps ; in the summer.’
‘But I’ll hardly have time to see anything of you. What a
shame — after all those years! And I can’t even stay with you
overnight in Paris, as I must get back to Maisons this evening.
I have to be on duty first thing to-morrow morning. It’s three
days, you see, since I left the hospital, and six new patients
came in just before I left.’
845
SUMMER, 1914
‘Anyhow we’ve all the afternoon before us,’ Antoine pointed
out consolingly.
‘But I’m not free this afternoon !’ she cried in despair. ‘I have
to go back to the Home at three. They want auntie’s room at
once, and I’ve got to see about getting her things moved out
of it.”
Her eyes were swimming with tears. Antoine remembered the
moods of black despair that used to come over her in her
childhood days. And again the fancy crossed his mind— how
good it would be to have her always at his side, lavishing on
him the warm devotion that came so naturally to her.
He felt at a loss what to say ; for he, too, was distressed by the
thought that they would see so little of each other.
‘I might be able to get an extension of my leave,’ he mur-
mured with affected dubiety. ‘It’s just possible. Perhaps I’ll
have a shot at it.’
Her eyes lit up at once, smiling through tears. (This, too,
reminded Antoine of bygone days.)
‘Yes, yes !’ she cried, clapping her hands. ‘That’s what you
must do; then you can come and stay some days with us at
Maisons.’
He thought : What a child she still is ! And what a charming
effect it has — such childishness of mind in a grown-up woman’s
body!
To give a new turn to the conversation, he asked, as if the
thought were puzzling him :
‘By the way, there’s something I want you to explain. How’s
it that no one came with you to Paris? Maisons isn’t so very far
away. What an idea letting you come in alone for the funeral 1 ’
This elicited a vigorous protest from Gise.
‘But you’ve no idea of the work we have at Maisons ! There’s
never a moment to spare. And, with me away of course, the
others had all the more to do.’
He could not help smiling at her indignant air, and, noticing
his smile, she launched out into an elaborate account of all
they had to do at the hospital, the thousand-and-one details of
their daily life.
From mid-September, 1914, Mme. de Fontanin, obsessed by
846
EPILOGUE
the desire of ‘making herself useful,’ had begun working up a
scheme for a war-hospital at Maisons-Laffitte. The English
couple to whom she had rented the house there which she had
inherited from her father, had left France on the outbreak of
the war. Thus her little country place was free. But it was too
small and also too far from the station to serve her purpose. She
decided then to appeal to Antoine and ask him to lend his
father’s house at Maisons, much larger than hers and within
easy reach of the town. Naturally Antoine had agreed, and he
had at once written to Gise, telling her to give Mme. de Fontanin
all the assistance she could in arranging the house for its new
functions, and to bring the two maids to help. Meanwhile
Mme. de Fontanin had enlisted the aid of Nicole Hequet, the
surgeon’s wife, who had a full nursing diploma. Under the
auspices of the National War Casualties Council, a board of
governors had been nominated, and six weeks later the Thibault
country house had been fully equipped, and, under the official
title of No. VII War Hospital, was ready to receive its first
batch of wounded soldiers. Since then. No. VII War Hospital
and those in charge of it — Mme. de Fontanin and Nicole — had
not known an idle day.
Antoine had been kept informed of all that was being done
and it had given him pleasure to learn that his father’s house
was serving so useful a purpose. What pleased him even more
was that the Fontanins had taken Gise so warmly to their bosom,
for he had felt anxious on her account when he learned that
she was staying on in Paris without a settled occupation. But,
truth to tell, he had felt no great interest in the activities of
No. VH War Hospital, and still less in the reorganization of the
Fontanins’ small country house which, under the capable
management of his ex-cook Clotilde, had become a sort of
hostel for the younger generation. Here Gise and Nicole lodged,
here Daniel had gone to ground after his operation, here, too,
Jenny since her return from Switzerland had been living, with
her child. Antoine found his curiosity aroused by Gise’s enthu-
siastic account of their life at Maisons and this little group of
people, to which he had rarely given a thought, began to take
living form before his eyes.
847
SUMMER, 1914
‘Amongst US all,’ Gise was saying, still full of her subject, ‘it’s
Jenny who has the hardest time of it. She has not only to look
after little Paul, but to superintend the laundry and you can
imagine what that means for a hospital with thirty-eight beds
— sometimes we have ‘extras,’ bringing it up to forty-five ; she
has to supervise the washing, ironing, mending of the linen,
sort it out and issue it every day, not to mention the registers
she keeps up. She’s quite done in when she comes back at
night. She works at the hospital all the afternoon but stays at
home in the mornings to attend to the baby. Mme. de Fontanin
lives at the hospital, in one of the rooms above the stables.’
It struck Antoine as rather odd to hear Gise, the niece of
pious and prudish old Mademoiselle, talking thus of Jenny’s
motherhood, as of something quite legitimate and usual. But
then he reflected : ‘Three years have passed, it’s ancient history.
And anyhow such a change has come over moral standards
since the war that things which would have shocked people
formerly are more or less accepted nowadays.’
‘Just think !’ Gise sounded quite indignant. ‘You were going
to leave Paris without even having a look at our baby ! Jenny’d
have been heart-broken.’
‘Don’t be so silly !’ Antoine laughed. ‘All you had to do was
not to tell her I’d been to Paris.’
‘No.’ An unwonted seriousness came into her voice, and she
lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t want to have any secrets from Jenny
. . . ever!’
He gazed at her wonderingly, but made no comment.
‘Anyhow can you be certain,’ she went on, ‘of getting an
extension of your leave?’
‘I’ll have a try.’
‘How?’
He lied again.
‘I’ll get Rumelles to ring up the military authorities, who
decide these matters.’
‘Ah, Rumelles . . ,’ she murmured pensively.
‘In any case I was meaning to look him up to-day. I haven’t
seen him since ... I want to thank him for all the trouble he
took on our account.’
848
EPILOGUE
This was the first time since they had met that day that either
had alluded to Jacques’ death.
Gise’s face began to twitch and patches of a still darker hue
mottled the dusky cheeks.
(Throughout the autumn of 1914 she had refused to believe
that Jacques was dead. For her his continued silence, the news
of his disappearance communicated by his friends in Switzer-
land, Jenny’s certitude of his death and Antoine’s similar belief
carried no weight whatever. She told herself : He has seized the
pretext given him by the war for disappearing once again, and
once again he will come back to us. And nightly she prayed God
for his return, confident that one day her prayers would be
answered. It was during this period that she had deliberately set
about winning Jenny’s affection, acting at the outset, there was
no denying, on a rather selfish motive. When Jacques comes
back, she told herself, he’ll find us friends, and I’ll be given a
place in their life. And perhaps he’ll be grateful to me for being
nice to her during his absence. Ultimately, however, news had
come through Rumelles of the aeroplane disaster and, after
reading a copy of the official report, she had been forced to
recognize the truth. And yet, in her heart of hearts, she always
nursed a vague, unreasoning surmise that somewhere, somehow,
there had been a mistake, and often in a sudden uprush of hope
would murmur : ‘Who knows . . ?’)
She was looking down again, to avoid meeting Antoine’s
gaze; an intolerable spasm of remembrance had gripped her
and for some moment she stayed unmoving, dazed with grief,
struggling to keep back her tears. At last, on the verge of break-
ing down, she jumped up and ran out of the room.
A little vexed by this distress, of which involuntarily he had
been the cause, Antoine watched her receding form. It struck
him Gise had put on weight considerably, especially about the
hips. In fact her figure made her look quite ten years older ; one
could easily have taken her for a woman in the thirties.
He had drawn the necklace from his pocket. Little balls of
leaden-hued ambergris, the size of cherry-stones, alternated
with big amber beads which had the shape of mirabelle plums
and the hue of them when over-ripe ; a cloudy yellow, here and
849
SUMMER, 1914
there translucent. As he idly fingered them the beads grew warm
and fragrant, and for a rapturous moment Antoine had the
illusion that he had just removed the necklace from Rachel’s neck.
When Gise came back with a basket of strawberries and
placed them on the table, her expression was still so woebegone
that Antoine, deeply moved, fondled in silence the soft brown
wrist, clasped by a silver bangle. A slight shudder passed
through her body, her eyelashes quivered. She would not meet
his gaze and, as she seated herself beside him, he saw the tears
welling up again in her eyes. And now, no longer trying to
conceal her grief, she turned to Antoine with a tremulous
smile and gazed at him for some moments without speaking.
Then ‘It’s silly of me !’ she murmured with a little sigh, and
fell to sugaring her strawberries. But almost at once she put
down the sugar-basin and straightened herself up with a little
nervous jerk. ‘Do you know what hurts me most, Antoine? It’s
that not one of all the people round me ever mentions his name.
I know that Jenny’s always thinking of him; it’s because he’s
Jacques’ son that she dotes on her baby as she does. And
Jacques is always there between us, in a way ; if I’m so fond of
her, it’s because of him, my memories of him. And it’s the
same with her, most likely. If she was so ready to make a bosom
friend of me, to treat me like a sister, it’s surely on his account.
But never, never does she speak to me of Jacques. It’s like a
secret that’s always at the back of our minds and links our lives
together — but never do we breathe a word about it. And,
Antoine, it makes me feel — I don’t know how to put it! —
stifled. Jenny, you see,’ — the words came with a sort of sob —
‘she’s so proud, she doesn’t make things easy. I’ve come to know
her really well. I’m awfully fond of her. I’d give my life for her
and for little Paul. But I can’t help suffering — horribly I Because
she is — what she is ; so stand-offish, so ... I don’t know what the
word is. Do you know, I think there’s something always preying
on her mind, the idea that nobody ever understood Jacques
except her. And she clings to that idea — that she was the one
person who understood him — with a sort of jealous spite, and
that’s why she won’t talk about him with others. Especially
with me. And yet, and yet . . .’
850
EPILOGUE
Big tears were rolling down her cheeks, though now her face,
from which all youth was gone, betrayed no longer grief but
only passion, anger and some other more primitive emotion
that Antoine could make little of He tried to set his thoughts
in order ; this news of Gise’s intimacy with Jenny was wholly
unexpected.
‘I’ve never been sure whether she knew about my — my
feelings for Jacques.’ Her voice still shook, but it had lost its
shrillness. ‘Oh, how I’d love to talk to her about that, to open
my heart to her ! I’ve nothing to conceal ; I’d much rather she
knew everything. Even that I used to hate her — once ; yes, hate
her bitterly. But that’s all over; since Jacques’ death the love
I had for him’ — her eyes lit up with fanatic devotion — ‘is all
for her now, and for their child.’
For some moments Antoine had scarcely troubled to listen
to her words, all his attention held by the brown fluttering
eyelids, the long lashes slowly rising and falling, veiling and
discovering, with the regularity of a revolving light, the darkly
glowing pupils. His cheek propped on his hand, he was resting
his elbow on the table, stirred with faint longings by the per-
fume of the necklace clinging to his fingers.
‘I’m all alone in the world now, except for them.’ Gise was
trying her best to speak more calmly. ‘Jenny’s promised to keep
me with her, always.’
He wondered : Would she come and live with me, if I pro-
posed it?
‘Yes, she’s promised it. And that’s what helps me to keep
going, to face the future. You understand, don’t you? There’s
nothing in the world I care for any longer, except to be with
her — and with our little one.’
No, he told himself, she wouldn’t come to me. Still he had
been struck by certain jarring undertones, which seemed to him
revealing, in her voice. What curious cross-currents of emotion,
he reflected, must pervade the friendship that’s sprung up
between these two women — these two widows ! Affection’s there
undoubtedly. But jealousy as well. And behind it all a rankling
hatred, I should say. In fact, a mix-up of emotions that’s
uncommonly like love !
851
SUMMER, 1914
Gise went on talking ; it was a wonderful solace thus to un-
burden herself, and she could not have enough of it.
‘You know Jenny’s a wonderful person, one in a thousand.
So noble-minded, so energetic. Yes, she’s wonderful. But awfully
hard on others. She’s worse than hard, she’s positively unjust to
poor Daniel. And to me, too — I can’t help feeling it, sometimes.
Oh, I know she has a perfect right to be like that; I’m so futile
compared with her. And yet — she makes mistakes, too. She’s
so sure of herself, it blinds her and she won’t hear of other people
having different ideas. Still what I ask isn’t anything so out of
the way. If she won’t let little Paul be brought up in his father’s
faith, that’s her affair, it’s no use my trying to go against her.
But at least she might let him be baptized by a protestant pastor,
don’t you agree?’ An obstinate expression had settled on her
face and the way she tossed her head in little petulant jerks,
while her lips set in a hard, peremptory line, reminded Antoine
of Mademoiselle, on the rare occasions when she ‘put her
foot down.’ ‘Yes,’ she cried, swinging brusquely round on
Antoine, ‘she can make a little protestant of him, if she
wants. But at least she shouldn’t bring up Jacques’ son like a
heathen.’
Antoine made an evasive gesture.
‘You don’t know baby,’ she said hastily. ‘He’s such a highly
strung, impulsive little chap, he’ll need religion when he grows
up.’ She sighed, and a note of poignant regret came into her
voice. ‘Like Jacques. Everything’d have been all right if
Jacques hadn’t lost his faith.’ Again, with amazing mobility,
her expression changed, grew soft, and a rapturous smile
dawned in her eyes. ‘The child’s extraordinarily like Jacques,
you know. His hair’s the same reddish brown. He has Jacques’
eyes and hands. And he’s terribly self-willed already for a child
of three. Sometimes he won’t do anything he’s told, but he
can be awfully sweet when he chooses.’ Not a trace of rancour
remained in her voice. She laughed. ‘Just think, he calls me
Auntie GiV
‘Self-willed, you say?’
‘Just like Jaques. And he has the same fits of sulkiness — you
remember how Jaques was? — a sort of suppressed fury. Then he
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EPILOGUE
runs off to a corner of the garden and stays there sulking, till
the mood passes.’
‘Is he intelligent?’
‘Very. He understands, picks things up at once. But he’s
terribly sensitive. There’s nothing one can’t get out of him by
gentleness, but if you cross him, or stop him doing something
he’s set his heart on, he flares up, clenches his little fists, and
scowls at you. Just like Jacques, again!’ She mused for some
moments. ‘Daniel took a good snapshot of him the other day.
Did Jenny send you one?’
‘No. Jenny has never sent me any photo of her son.’
Gise looked surprised. She gazed at him enquiringly, but
refrained from putting the question hovering on her lips.
Then ‘I have the photo with me, in my bag,’ she said. ‘Like
to see it?’
‘Yes.’
She ran out of the room, fetched her bag and produced two
small snapshots.
One of them, taken presumably in the previous year, showed
little Jean Paul with his mother. Jenny had filled out a little,
her face was fuller, her expression calm, indeed austere. ‘She’ll
be like Madame de Fontanin,’ Antoine said to himself Jenny
was in black, sitting on the steps of her mother’s house, with the
baby in her arms.
In the other, obviously a more recent photograph, little
Paul was by himself He was wearing a tight-fitting jersey suit
that showed to advantage the remarkable sturdiness of the small
body. The child stood stiffly erect, eyes downcast and a sulky
look on his face.
Antoine was greatly interested by the two likenesses. The
second, especially, reminded him of Jacques. There were the
same deep-set, penetrating eyes, the same mouth, and the same
chin — the heavy Thibault under-jaw.
Gise, standing behind Antoine, leaning on his shoulder,
explained :
‘When that was taken, he’d been busy building sand-castles,
and somebody had interrupted him. He flew into a temper
and threw his spade away; you can see it lying there’ — ^she
853
SUMMER, 1914
pointed. ‘Then he backed to the wall and Daniel “snapped”
him.’
Antoine looked up with a laugh.
‘Why, Gise, you love that child as much as if you were his
mother !’
She smiled without replying, but in her smile there was a
world of affection, a radiance that said more than words.
Nevertheless a vague embarrassment, which Antoine failed
to notice, had seized her — as always when a chance remark
recalled that absurd, unbelievable thing that she had done —
when was it? Over two years ago it must have been, for Paul
was then quite tiny, not yet weaned. There was nothing Gise
liked better than having him in her arms, rocking him to sleep
against her breast. Whenever she saw Jenny suckling the baby,
a rush of furious jealousy and despair swept over her, all but
shattering her self-control. One day, yielding to a sudden,
preposterous temptation, she had taken the baby to her room
and pressed his lips to her breast. Her senses tingled as she
remembered how the tiny mouth had fastened on her greedily,
leaving her bruised and sore. Indeed for the next few days she
had suffered almost as much physically as from a sense of
shame. Was it a sin she had committed? It was not until she
had made avowal of it — though in veiled terms — in the con-
fessional that she had regained some peace of mind, and on her
own initiative she had imposed a lengthy penance on herself
for this lapse — which she had never repeated.
Antoine asked :
‘Is he often like that? I mean does he often have that
obstinate look?’
‘Oh yes, very often indeed. Still that time it was Daniel
who’d upset him. Though as a matter of fact he’s less disobedient
with Daniel than with the rest of us. Because he has a man to
deal with most likely. Yet he dotes on his mother, and he’s
very fond of me. But we’re only women. And he seems quite
conscious already of his — what shall I call it? — masculine
superiority. No, I’m not joking, it’s perfectly true. He makes one
feel it in a heap of little ways.’
‘I’d be more inclined to think your authority doesn’t work
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EPILOGUE
SO well because you’re always with him. Whereas his uncle,
whom he doesn’t see so often . . .’
‘But he does ! He’s far more with his uncle than with us,
as we’ve our work at the hospital. It’s Daniel who looks after
him almost all the day.’
‘What? Daniel?’
She had been leaning over Antoine’s shoulder; now she
moved away a little and sat down.
‘Yes. Why not? Does it surprise you?’
‘Well somehow I don’t see Daniel in the role of nurse-
maid . . .’
Gise did not understand; she had never met Daniel before
he had been amputated.
‘I assure you he’s quite happy to have the little chap for
company. It’s pretty dull for him at Maisons with nothing
to do.’
‘But now that he’s been invalided out, hasn’t he started
working again?’
‘Working? In the hospital, you mean?’
‘No. At his painting.’
‘His painting? I’ve never seen him with a brush in his hand.’
‘Doesn’t he run in to Paris now and then?’
‘Never. He spends his time pottering about the house or in
the garden.’
‘I suppose he has trouble in walking.’
‘Oh no, that’s not it. One doesn’t notice that he’s lame unless
one watches him closely. Especially now that he has his new
artificial limb. He just doesn’t want to go out. He reads the
papers, looks after Paul and plays with him. Sometimes he goes
to the kitchen and helps Clotilde shelling peas or peeling fruit
for jam. Now and then he gets a rake and hoe and tidies up the
terrace. Not often though. That’s how Daniel is — slack,
apathetic ; in fact he seems half asleep most of the time.’
‘Daniel !’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘W’ell, he usedn’t to be like that at all. . . . Poor fellow, he
must be very unhappy.’
‘Unhappy? What an idea! He doesn’t even seem bored;
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SUMMER, 1914
anyhow he never complains. Sometimes he’s a bit irritable —
with the others, never with me; but that’s because they don’t
know how to handle him. Nicole’s always fussing round him,
teasing him, and it gets on his nerves. Jenny, too, is tactless ;
she won’t answer him or answers in a chilling way. Of course
Jenny’s kindness itself, but she’s no good at showing it; she
never seems to say or do anything that makes others happy.’
Antoine said nothing, but his face betrayed such amazement
that Gise burst out laughing.
‘Really I think you’ve quite a wrong idea of Daniel’s tem-
perament. I should say he’s always been terribly spoilt — and
he’s the laziest of men !’
Their meal was long since ended. After glancing at her
watch Gise jumped up hastily.
‘I’ll clear the table and then I really must be off.’
Standing in front of Antoine, she gazed at him affectionately.
The thought of leaving him alone and ill in the depressing
atmosphere of the flat distressed her greatly, and she racked her
brains for something to propose. Then a shy smile lit up her
eyes, and settled on her lips.
‘I say, supposing I came back and called for you here later on?
You could spend the night with us at Maisons instead of staying
here all by yourself.’
He shook his head.
‘Nothing doing for to-night. I’m afraid. I must look up
Rumelles this afternoon and I shall see Philip to-morrow.
What’s more I’ve a long job before me, looking for the papers I
want to take back with me.’ He reflected. There was no necessity
for him to be back at Le Mousquier before Friday night, so it
was quite feasible to spend a couple of days at Maisons-Laffitte.
He asked :
‘But where’ll you put me up, if I come?’
With a little cry of joy she bent forward hastily and kissed
him before replying.
‘Where? Why, at the Hostel, of course. We’ve still two bed-
rooms free.’
He had kept the photograph of little Paul in his hand, now
and again glancing down at it.
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EPILOGUE
‘All right, I’ll see about getting my leave extended. And I’ll
be round to-morrow evening.’ He held up the photograph. ‘I
can keep this, can’t I?’
5
A Dinner at MaxirrCs
Though it was a Sunday Rumellcs was in his office
when, after Gise had left, Antoine rang him up. He explained
that he had not a moment to spare in the afternoon, but
suggested that Antoine should pick him up at eight, and they
should dine together.
When Antoine called at the Foreign Office, Rumelles was
awaiting him at the foot of the staircase. The lights were
dimmed to black-out exiguity, and the dark forms of employees
leaving after the day’s work and a few belated visitors arriving,
the play of shadows and the silence, combined to create an
eerie, conspiratorial atmosphere.
Rumelles greeted Antoine warmly, if with a vaguely
patronizing air, and at once led him to the courtyard where
several cars, flying the official flag, were lined up.
‘I’ll take you to Maxim’s; that’ll make a good change after
hospital life, won’t it?’
‘I’m afraid,’ Antoine smiled, ‘a cabaret dinner will be rather
wasted on me. I’m only allowed milk at night.’
‘That’s all right.’ (Rumelles had made up his mind to dine
at Maxim’s.) ‘They’ve excellent iced milk there.’
Antoine reluctantly assented. The day’s exertions — he had
spent a strenuous afternoon rummaging amongst his books and
memoranda — had been too much for him, and he rather
dreaded the prospect of a loquacious evening. He made haste to
warn Rumelles that he found difficulty in speaking, and had to
spare his throat as much as possible.
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SUMMER, 1914
‘What luck for me !’ laughed Rumelles. ‘You know how I
love talking.’ Anxious at all costs not to betray how dismayed
he was by his friend’s sunken cheeks and hollow, toneless voice,
he deliberately forced the jovial note.
On entering the brightly lighted restaurant he was even more
shocked to see the change that had come over Antoine. But
he took care not to put any too pressing questions as to his
health and, after some vague enquiries, made haste to change
the subject.
‘No soup. Yes, some oysters. It’s the end of the season but
they’re still in condition ... 1 dine here pretty often.’
‘I used to come here pretty often, too,’ Antoine murmured.
He threw a quick glance round the room ; then his gaze came
to rest on the old head waiter, waiting to take their order. ‘You
remember me, Jean, don’t you?’
‘Remember you, sir? Of course I do.’ The man bowed with
a conventional smile.
Antoine thought: He’s lying. He always used to call me
‘Doctor.’
‘This place is near my office,’ Rumelles pointed out. ‘And
when there’s an air-raid warning it’s very handy. I’ve only got
to step across the road to the Admiralty building, where they’ve
an excellent shelter.’
Antoine watched Rumelles as he selected his dinner. He, too,
had changed. His features had grown coarser ; the yellow hair,
still shaggy as a lion’s mane, was streaked with grey, and a
network of tiny wrinkles had gathered round his eyes. Under
the lower lids bluish pouches had formed, overhanging the
pale cheeks, on which a skin affection had left a tracery of
scarlet veins. Only the eyes had not aged; they were bright,
alert as ever.
At last with a weary gesture he gave back the bill of fare to
the maitre d’hStel. ‘I’ll choose my dessert later.’ Letting his head
sink back, he pressed his palms to his forehead, his fingers on
his aching eyelids; then heaved a deep sigh. ‘It’s appalling,
Thibault ! I haven’t had a day off since the war started — and
I’m at the end of my tether.’
That was obvious ; the cumulative effect of years of constant
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strain on this highly strung man had taken the form of an
extreme restlessness. Yes, Antoine thought, indeed he’s changed
appallingly from the Rumelles I knew in 1914, the pattern of
diplomacy, a bit too cock-sure and inclined to lay down the
law, but always keeping his tongue well in hand, watching his
step ! Four years of overwork had made of him a man with
vacillating eyes, a short, jerky laugh, who gesticulated, jumped
abruptly from one topic to another, and on whose puffy features
the expression changed suddenly from feverish alertness to one
of utter prostration. Yet he still tried to keep up appearances;
after each confession of fatigue, he straightened up for a
moment, flung back his head, sleeked his long hair with a
sweeping gesture, and conjured up a smile that had much of
the old breeziness.
Antoine began by thanking him for taking so much trouble
over the enquiries into the circumstances of Jacques’ death,
and for the help he had given Jenny when she went to Switzer-
land. Rumelles broke in genially:
‘Don’t mention it, old chap. It was the least thing I could
do.’ Then, smiling rather fatuously, he added. ‘Such an
attractive young woman — it was a pleasure, don’t you know?’
Too much the ‘man of the world’ not to play the fool on
occasion, was Antoine’s silent comment.
Having once cut Antoine short, Rumelles kept the conversa-
tion to himself. He launched out into a detailed description of
the various steps he had taken, as though the matter were
completely new to Antoine. Each fact was amazingly clear in
his memory; every date, the names of all who had helped in
the enquiry, came pat off his lips.
‘What a sad end !’ he sighed, in concluding. ‘But you’re not
drinking your milk, Thibault. It’ll get warm . . .’ He shot a
furtive glance at Antoine, brought his wineglass to his lips,
wiped his cat-like moustache, and sighed again. ‘Yes, a tragic
end. I felt for you most deeply, needless to say. And yet —
considering the circumstances. . . your views . . . the family
honour — one can’t half wonder if, for the family anyhow, his
death was not, if I may put it so, a blessing in disguise.’
Antoine frowned, but kept silence. Rumelles’ words had cut
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SUMMER, 1914
him to the quick. And yet he could not deny that much the
same idea had occurred to him when he had learned the truth
regarding the last days of Jacques’ life. It had occurred to him
then ; but now — well, he had come to take a very different view.
Indeed the mere remembrance that he had once felt thus about
Jacques’ death made him hot with shame. The last few years of
war, the long sleepless nights of solitary musing at the hospital,
had made havoc of so many preconceived ideas !
He had not the least wish to discuss with Rumelles his
personal feelings on the matter ; least of all in this place. For
he had often taken Anne to dinner here in happier days, and,
from the moment he had entered, associations of the past had
added to his sensation of discomfort. He had been naively
surprised to find a de luxe restaurant so crowded with people
in this, the forty-fourth month of war. That night, indeed,
Maxim’s was as full as he had ever seen it in pre-war days.
There were perhaps fewer women, and those present were less
elegantly dressed ; there was a suggestion of the hospital nurse
about a good many of them. Most of the men present were in
uniform, their tunics bedizened with ribbons of every hue,
their Sam Brownes glossy and close-fitting. The majority were
staff officers or members of the Paris garrison troops, but some
were obviously on leave from the fighting front. The Air Force,
too, was well in evidence: a noisy group, the focus of public
admiration, but their eyes held curious experience and sadness,
with a glint of desperation, and they gave the impression of
being drunk before they had began to drink. There was a motley
assortment of Italian, Belgian, Roumanian and Japanese
uniforms; and a few Naval Officers were present. But most
numerous were the British — in khaki, with stiff collars and
immaculate starched shirts— who had come to Maxim’s for a
champagne dinner.
‘Mind you let me know before the time comes for you to
leave hospital,’ said Rumelles in a friendly tone. ‘They mustn’t
send you to the front again. You’ve done your share, and
more.’
Antoine tried to put in a word; after having been certified
recovered from his first wound he had been posted for medical
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duty in the back areas. But Rumelles went on speaking without
a pause.
‘Personally, Pm pretty sure to see the war through at the
F.O. When Monsieur Clemenceau took over, there was some
talk of sending me to London, and Pd certainly have been side-
tracked there if President Poincare, a good friend of mine, and
especially Monsieur Berthelot — I know all his little fads and
he can’t get on without me — hadn’t put in a word on my
behalf. Of course it would have been quite interesting to be in
London just now. But I wouldn’t have felt at the centre of
things, as I do here. And it’s thrilling, I assure you !’
‘Oh, I can quite believe it. You anyhow are one of the
favoured few who’re able to understand what’s really happen-
ing. And, I dare say, to forecast the future, to some extent.’
‘You’re wrong there!’ Rumelles broke in. ‘To understand —
no; and to forecast, still less! One can have all the “inside
information” that’s obtainable, and yet be unable to make head
or tail of how things are going ; it’s the utmost one can do to
understand what has already happened. Don’t imagine that
any statesman to-day, even an autocratic, headstrong one like
Monsieur Clemenceau, has any real power of shaping the course
of events. No, he’s at their mercy. Governing a nation in war-
time is rather like being captain of a ship that’s leaking at every
seam ; one has to make shift hour by hour, as best one can, to
stop the most dangerous leaks — with the risk of foundering
always looming in the background. It’s all one can do to snatch
a moment now and then to take the sun, glance at the chart,
set an approximate course. Monsieur Clemenceau is in the
same position as the other national leaders; he doesn’t shape
events, events shape him. The most he does is, whenever an
opening occurs, to turn it to account. In my present post I’ve
a close-up view of our great man. He’s a curious type.’ He
fell silent and his face grew thoughtful; when he spoke again,
he interspersed his summing-up with studied pauses. ‘Yes, M.
Clemenceau’s character is a queer mixture of instinctive
scepticism . . . considered pessimism and . . . resolute optimism.
But there’s no denying it’s a most effective mixture !’ He beamed
complacently on Antoine, as if entertained by his own wit and
86 1
SUMMER, 1914
relishing the neatness of the phrases he had just enounced.
(As a matter of fact he gave Antoine the impression of repeating
something he had learnt by rote and had probably been ‘unload-
ing’ on every one he met for several months.) ‘And there’s
another thing,’ Rumelles continued. ‘Thorough-paced sceptic
though he is, he has a simple faith — which never falters ; that
the nation to which Monsieur Clemenceau belongs is invincible.
And that, my dear Thibault, is a tremendous asset. Even at this
present moment, when — this is strictly between ourselves, of
course — even the most confirmed optimists are feeling definitely
rattled, well this old patriot of ours has not the faintest doubt
that we shall win the war. He seems convinced that, by some
divine right, the cause of France must necessarily be victorious.’
An English officer at a neighbouring table had just lit a
cigar and Antoine’s throat was tickling. When he tried to
speak, his voice was so weak — the napkin he was holding to his
lips muffled it still more — that only a few stray words were
audible.
‘. . . help from America . . . Wilson.’
Rumelles thought best to make as if he had heard everything,
and even assumed an air of extreme interest.
‘Ah yes,’ he murmured, stroking his chin meditatively. ‘Pre-
sident Wilson, as you say . . . but of course we’ve our own ideas
about him at the F.O. In France and England we’re obliged to
show a certain deference for the fantastic notions of that worthy
American professor; but we’ve no illusions as to what he is.
He has what I may call a one-way mind ; no sense of propor-
tion. And for a statesman, that’s disastrous. He lives in a sort
of dreamworld he has built up out of his imagination. Well-
meaning, I grant you, but heaven preserve us if this mystic-
minded puritan starts meddling with the complicated political
machinery of our old-world Europe !’
Antoine would have wished to put in a word, but the state of
his throat made it almost impossible. Of all the leading states-
men of the day Wilson was, to his thinking, the only one
capable of looking beyond the war and planning for the future
on broad lines. But the most Antoine could do now was to
show his disagreement by an emphatic gesture.
862
EPILOGUE
Rumellcs took it smiling.
‘Oh come now, old chap! Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for
President Wilson’s Utopian theories.’ He stretched his arm out,
leaned foward and, resting his plump, freckled hand on the
tablecloth, continued in a confidential undertone. ‘In any case
those in the know assure us that President Wilson isn’t quite so
simple as he seems, and knows better than his famous “Mes-
sages.” It seems that in championing a “Peace without Victory”
he has a wholly practical aim in view — to assure American
preponderance in the Old World by preventing the Allies from
reaping the ftuits of victory; that’s to say, from becoming the
dominant force in world affairs. Well, if that’s his plan, it
doesn’t say much for his insight. For no one with any gumption
could suppose that France and England would have bled them-
selves white during all these years of war if they didn’t stand
to get out of it some pretty solid and material benefit.’
But, Antoine inwardly protested, if at last a real peace, a
foolproof peace, could be contrived, surely that would be the
most ‘material’ gain the European nations could possibly get
out of the war? But he did’ not voice his thought. The heat and
noise, the fumes of food and the tobacco smoke, were making
him more and more ill at ease. His difficulty in breathing was
increasing. He was furious with himself for having been so weak
as to accept Rumelles’ invitation, and ruefully reflected : I’ve
a fine night in store I
But all this was lost on Rumellcs, who seemed to take a
personal pleasure in disparaging Wilson. For the bureaucrats
at the Quai d’Orsay, Antoine supposed, the American President
had come to be a target for their witticisms, their bHe-noire.
Rumelles emphasized each sally with an angry little cackle,
bobbing up and down on his chair as if he were sitting on
live coals.
‘Luckily President Poincare and Monsieur Clemenceau have
the realistic outlook of the Latin races and they’ve realized the
futility of the Wilsonian mirage. But don’t forget that things
have reached a point where reinforcements from America are
absolutely indispensable. And once we’ve a big Yankee army
on French soil to take a spell of duty at the front, we’ll be able
863
SUMMER, 1914
to get our second wind and sit tight while America settles
Germany’s hash for good and all.’
In thoughtful mood Antoine watched Rumelles eating steak
— ‘Veiy underdone, please. Blue!’ he had told the waiter. Then
he raised his arm slightly, as if asking leave to speak.
‘So you think the war will last — several years more?’
Pushing away his plate, Rumelles leant back in his chair.
‘Several years? No, I shouldn’t say that. In fact I rather
think we’ll have some pleasant surprises quite soon.’ He gazed
pensively at his finger-nails for a moment; then, lowering his
voice again, bent towards Antoine. ‘Listen, Thibault, I remem-
ber hearing Monsieur Deschanel say one evening in my
presence — it was in February, 1915 : “It’s impossible to estimate
the duration of this war or the course that it will take. To my
mind, it’s a recrudescence of the wars following the Revolution.
There may be (ruces ; but a lasting peace is very far away !”
When I heard that remark I hardly took it seriously. But to-day
— well, to-day I’m more inclined to regard it as a flash of
prophetic insight.’ He paused, toyed for a moment with the salt-
cellar, then added : ‘So much so that if to-morrow the Allies
win some spectacular victory and the Central Powers ask for
an armistice, I shall think, like Monsieur Deschanel : Here’s a
truce, but the final, lasting peace is still far off.’
He sighed, then with that air of reciting a set piece which so
exasperated Antoine, he launched into a masterly summary of
the course of the war, beginning from the invasion of Belgium.
Presented thus, with the successive phases summarized m clean-
cut patterns, the march of events was seen to follow an amazingly
logical sequence, move following move as in a game of chess.
For the first time Antoine saw this war, in which he had taken
part day after day, in full perspective, under its historical
aspect. In Rumelles’ eloquent resume names like ‘Verdun,’ ‘the
Marne,’ ‘the Somme,’ pregnant till now for Antoine with
tragically vivid personal associations, were suddenly stripped
of immediate reality and became landmarks in a technical
epitome, chapter-headings in a handbook for the use of history
students.
‘That brings us to 1918,’ Rumelles said in conclusion; ‘the
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EPILOGUE
entry of America into the war, the tightening-up of the blockade
and a breakdown of German morale. Logically their defeat
became inevitable. In these circumstances they had the choice
of two alternatives : either to try for a patched-up peace before
it was too late, or stake all on a mass offensive before the bulk
of the American troops had come over. They chose the second
solution; hence the “big push” in Picardy last March. Once
again it was touch-and-go for us. Now they’re returning to the
attack. That’s how things stand now. Will they bring it off this
time? It’s just possible that we may find ourselves obliged to sue
for peace before the summer’s over. But if they fail, well, they’ll
have played their last card. In short, they’ll have lost the war —
whether we stay our hands till the Americans are over in full
force, or— as, I gather, is Foch’s intention — we fling our last
troops into a general attack on all fronts and establish ourselves
firmly in enemy territory before the Americans throw their full
weight into the scales. That’s why I’m inclined to say: “The
prospect of a real peace, a lasting peace may well be still
remote ; but a truce may come at any moment.” ’
He had to stop talking ; the fit of coughing that had come over
Antoine was so severe that it would have been difficult for
Rumelles, this time, to feign he had not noticed it.
‘Sorry, old chap; I’m afraid my chatter has been too much
for you. Let’s be going.’
He beckoned the head-waiter, drew — in the best American
style — a wad of notes from his trouser-pocket, and settled the
bill after a casual glance.
In the Rue Royale black-out reigned; the lights of the
cars drawn up by the kerb were out. Rumelles gazed up at
the sky.
‘A elear sky. “They” may very well pay us a visit to-night.
I must get back to the F.O. to see if anything’s come in. But I’ll
drive you home first.’
Antoine stepped into the car. Before joining him Rumelles
bought several evening papers at the book-stall.
‘Eyewash !’ Antoine muttered.
Before replying Rumelles took care to close the sliding
window behind the driver.
865 FF
SUMMER, 1914
‘Of course it’s eyewash !’ Rumelles retorted almost aggres-
sively. ‘Don’t you realize it’s just as necessary to supply the
country with its daily ration of optimistic news, as to supply the
troops with ammunition?’
‘Ah yes,’ Antoine murmured ironically. ‘I was forgetting you
have the “cure of souls.” ’
Rumelles tapped his friend’s knee reprovingly.
‘You may laugh, Thibault, but it’s a serious matter. Only
think. What can a government do in wartime? Control the
course of events? Impossible, as you know. But public opinion’s
another matter. That, anyhow, the government can control;
in fact it’s the one and only thing it can control. Well, here’s
where we come in. Indeed our principal task is — how shall I
put it? — this adjustment of the facts before they reach the
public. We have to see the news is such as to reinforce the public
confidence in victory. And it’s equally important to safeguard,
day by day, the trust the nation has come to repose in its
leaders, military and civil.’
‘By fair means or foul, it’s all the same?’
Rumelles’ only answer was a slight shrug of his shoulders.
After crawling down the dimly lit Boulevard Saint Germain
and the Rue de I’Universite, the car had pulled up at Antoine’s
door. The two men stepped out. Rumelles was still speaking.
‘For instance, there was the week of Nivelle’s offensive, in
April, 1917.’ The febrile eagerness Antoine had noticed before
had again crept into his voice, and, grasping Antoine’s arm, he
drew him out of the driver’s earshot. ‘You can’t imagine what
it was like for us, who followed each stage of it hour by hour and
saw blunder heaped on blunder, and reckoned up each night
our losses. Thirty-four thousand killed and over eighty thousand
wounded in four or five days. Followed by a mutiny of the
regiments concerned — what was left of them ! But there could
be no question of admitting the facts, or doing justice ; at all
costs the mutiny had to be suppressed, before it spread to other
regiments. It was a matter of life or death for the nation. So we
had to bolster up the General Staff, camouflage their blunders,
save their face. Worse still, with our eyes open to the folly of it,
we had to carry on, resume the offensive, throw more divisions
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EPILOGUE
into the shambles and sacrifice twenty or twenty-five thousand
men more at Chemin-des-Dames and LafFaux.’
‘But why?’
‘To score a small success, however trifling, upon which we
could graft the “serviceable lie.” And to restore confidence,
which had been badly shaken everywhere. At last we had a
stroke of luck in the Craonne attack. We magnified it into a
splendid victory. We were saved! Ten days later the Govern-
ment superseded the generals responsible, and put Petain in
command.’
Ready to drop with weariness, Antoine was leaning against
the wall. Rumelles helped him to the doorway.
‘Yes, we were saved. But I assure you I’d rather give up a
year of my life than have to live through those few weeks again.’
He sounded sincere. ‘Well, I must be off now. So glad to have
seen you again.’ As Antoine was going in, he called after him.
‘Now do look after yourself properly, old chap. You doctors
are all alike ; devoted to your patients, but criminally careless
when your own health is concerned.’
Gise had got the bedroom ready. The shutters were closed
and the curtains drawn; the dust-covers had been removed
from the chairs, and the bed made. A carafe of water and a
tumbler stood on the bedside-table, within easy reach. Antoine
was so much affected by these small tokens of solicitude that he
said to himself: ‘I must be even more run down than I
realized. . . .’
The first thing he did was to give himself an oxygen injection.
Then he sank into an easy chair and remained sitting bolt
upright, his shoulders propped against the back, for ten minutes.
He caught himself thinking of Rumelles with a sudden, fierce
hostility, unjust no doubt, which took him by surprise. Then,
‘No,’ he murmured; ‘between us and them there can be no
reconcilement ; between us who’ve been at the front and those
who stayed behind.’
He was feeling a little easier in the chest. Rising, he checked
his temperature : 100.5. Nothing exceptional after such a day.
Before turning in, he was careful to take a prolonged
inhalation.
867
SUMMER, 1914
‘No,’ he muttered again, as ragefully he buried his head in
the pillow, ‘there’s no possibility of pulling along with them.
When demobilization comes, the men who stayed behind will
have to lie low, stand aside. The France, the Europe of to-
morrow will belong, as of right, to the men who fought in the
war. And in every country they’ll refuse to have any dealings
with the men who did not fight.’
The gloom weighed on him like a pall, but he refrained from
switching on the light. This room, formerly M. Thibault’s
bedroom, had been the scene of the old man’s painful illness
and death-agony, and Antoine clearly recalled each detail:
the bath shortly before he died, Jacques’ assistance, the merciful
injection, the watchers at the deathbed, the quiet close. And
before his eyes staring wide-open into the dark there formed a
clean-cut picture of the room as it had looked then, with the
huge mahogany bed, the chest-of-drawers laden with medicine-
bottles, and the old tapestry-upholstered prie-Dieu.
6
Antoine's Dream
Thanks to the oxygen injection Antoine had passed a
fairly comfortable, if all but sleepless, night. At last towards
dawn he had dropped into a doze, which had lasted long enough
to involve him in a preposterous nightmare. It had brought on
a fit of sweating so profuse as to awake him and necessitate a
change of pyjamas. On returning to bed, with little hope, how-
ever, of getting any more sleep, he occupied his mind with
conjuring up the sequence of his fantastic dream.
‘Let’s see. There were three distinct episodes, three scenes,
but all in the same setting : the hall of my flat.
‘At first I was there with L6on, half mad with terror at the
thought that Father might come home at any mom^pt. It was
868
EPILOGUE
an appalling situation. I’d taken advantage of Father’s absence
to annex his belongings; I’d ransacked the whole house. And
now Father was going to return; I’d be caught red-handed.
What a ghastly mess ! 1 paced up and down the hall, racking
my brains to find a way of staving off disaster. There was no
question of quitting the house. . . . Now why was that? Because
of Gise, who would be back in a few minutes. Leon, as panic-
stricken as myself, was keeping watch, his ear glued to the front
door. I can still see that goggle eye of his, dilated with alarm.
Once he looked round in my direction, saying :
‘ “Hadn’t I better go and tell the Mistress?”
‘That was scene Nurr^ber One. In the second Father was
planted there in front of me in the middle of the hall, wearing
a frock-coat and top hat with a band of crape — like Chasle’s
— because of the funeral. (What funeral?) On the floor beside him
was a brand-new valise, like the one I brought with me to Paris
yesterday. Leon had vanished. Father, fussily, but very dignified,
was fumbling in his pockets. When he noticed me, he said, “Ah,
there you are? What’s become of Mademoiselle?” Then went on
in the paternal, pompous tone he used on such occasions : “Ah,
my dear boy. I’ve lots to tell you ; I’ve been in strange countries,
most peculiar places.” My mouth was parched, I couldn’t get
a word out. I was again a little boy, trembling at the prospect
of a well-earned punishment. And all the time I was wondering ;
“How on earth didn’t he notice all the changes, on his way up
the stairs? That the stained-glass windows had gone? The new
carpet?” Then in a rush of panic, I thought: “How am I to
stop him entering our room, and seeing the bed?” Then — no,
I can’t remember, there’s a blank here.
‘In the last scene Father was standing at the same spot, but
in carpet slippers and that old plaid jacket he used to wear at
home. He was in one of his black moods, jabbing forward his
small, peaked beard and tugging at his neck to free it from the
collar-wings. Then, with that little, frosty laugh of his he said :
“And now perhaps you’ll tell me, my dear boy, where you’ve
put my spectacles?” I knew at once what he meant — the
tortoise-shell spectacles I’d found in his study and made over,
along with his clothes and personal effects, to the Little Sisters
869
SUMMER, 1914
of the Poor. Then suddenly he flared up and strode towards
me. “And my securities? What have you done with them?”
“What securities do you mean, Father?” I panted. I was sweat-
ing heavily and I remember listening, as I mopped my face,
for the click of the lift door. I was expecting Gise to appear at
any moment — in nurse’s uniform, of course ; it was the time she
came back from her hospital. And then — I woke up, dripping
with sweat, as in my dream.’
The memory of his panic fear made him smile ; but he was
still labouring under its effects. It struck him he had a slight
temperature . . . Yes, 99.2. Better than yesterday evening, but
this morning it should have been practically normal.
When he was in his bathroom, two hours later, washing and
gargling his throat, his thoughts sped back to the dream.
‘The queer thing,’ he mused, ‘when one looks into it, is how
short it was. Three flash-like episodes, all told : a brief phase
of suspense, with Leon; Father’s sudden appearance with the
valise; the talk about the spectacles and securities. Yet how
much more there was to it than that ! It was, so to speak, the
uprush of something infinitely vaster, a self-contained totality
— my whole past.’
Feeling a slight difficulty in breathing, due to his having
stayed on his feet too long, Antoine sat down on the edge of the
bath, and let his thoughts run on.
‘It’s curious how the past always provides the groundwork of
our dreams — a fact which must often have been observed, and
has probably been investigated. Still, it’s a new idea to me. Now
that dream of mine last night — it’s a particularly striking case
in point. In fact I might screw up my energy and write it out,
or I’ll have forgotten all about it in a couple of days.’
He glanced at the clock. Plenty of time to spare. He fetched
the diary in which he wrote up every night his clinical observa-
tions on his illness and which he had been careful to bring
with him. Then, after tearing out some blank pages and wrap-
ping himself in the bathrobe hanging on one of the pegs—
‘Dear little Gise,’ he smiled, ‘she thought of everything !’ — he
went back to the bedroom and lay down on the bed.
He had been scribbling away enthusiastically for three-
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EPILOGUE
quarters of an hour when there was a ring at the bell. It was
an express letter from Philip, couched in affectionate terms,
explaining that he had to be away from Paris for two days —
he was at the head of a Commission appointed to inspect the
hospitals of the Northern Command— but hoped Antoine would
come and see him on Wednesday evening.
It was a great disappointment for Antoine ; still, he reminded
himself, things might have been worse ; it was lucky he was not
obliged to return to Grasse before next Thursday.
The pages from his diary, five in all, were scattered on the
bed, covered with his curious handwriting, that had the look
of hieroglyphs, each letter being separated from its neighbours
— a trick acquired in the days when he had had to ‘do’ Greek
proses. The first two sheets contained an analytical description
of the dream, including all the characteristic details he could
recall. The other three were devoted to a commentary on these
data. It was one of Antoine’s pet ideas that clear thinking con-
duces to clear writing, and it annoyed him to find his annota-
tions somewhat lacking in lucidity. Yet, in earlier days, he had
excelled in the art of setting forth, in a few pithy sentences,
all the essentials of an elaborate thought-sequence. ‘If I’m to
start contributing again to the reviews,’ he told himself, ‘I’ll
have to get my mind back into training.’
This is what he had written.
In a dream there are two distinct elements ; —
(1) The dream proper, its happenings (in which the
dreamer always partakes to some extent). These happen-
ings (the plot) are like a scene in a stage-play; they are
usually brief, scrappy, but teeming with action.
(2) Environing this tense dramatic nucleus there is a
given situation, which shapes it, gives it plausibility. This
situation lies outside the actual happenings and nowhere
intrudes on them. But the dreamer is definitely aware of
its presence. And, in the texture of the dream, that situa-
tion is presented to him as one in which the dreamer has
been involved over a long period. It is comparable with all
that a man’s past connotes for him in the waking state.
In the case of the dream I had last night, I find that each
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SUMMER, 1914
of its three episodes is surrounded by a complex of circum-
stances which, though not actually participating in the
action of the dream, were implicitly embodied in it. And
indeed, if one looks more closely into it, these ‘circum-
stances’ are found to be of two kinds, disposed, as it were,
in two successive zones. We have the immediate circum-
stances, closely massed round the nucleus. And then we
have a second zone, further removed from it in time : an
agglomeration of much older circumstances, forming an
imaginary past without which the dream would not have
been possible. This past, of which I, the dreamer, was
constantly aware, played no part in the course of the dream
itself; it was merely pre-existed as regards the dream, much
as the past of the characters in a play is pre-existent to the
action on the stage.
Now to go further into detail. What I mean by a
‘circumstance of the First Zone’ is, for instanee, that /
knew the time it was, though in the dream there was no
question of the hour. I knew it was a few minutes before
noon and that I was expecting Gise to come home for
lunch, as usual. I knew that earlier in the morning, when
she was out and I’d no means of communicating with her,
I had received a wire from Father to say he, was returning
for the funeral. (An obscure point, that. Whose funeral?
Not Mademoiselle’s. But it must have been the funeral of
a member of our household, for we were all affected by this
bereavement.) I knew that Father was fumbling in his
pocket for money to pay his fare, for I knew that a taxi,
laden with luggage, had just set him down at the front door
(I think I might go so far as to say I could see the taxi
waiting in the street simultaneously with seeing Father in
the hall.)
Circumstances of the Second Zone. By this I mean a
group of events fairly remote in time and within the know-
ledge of the ‘dream’ Antoine. I cannot definitely affirm
that I actually thought about these events while the dream
was in progress ; but their memory was implicit in me (as
are one’s memories of real life). Thus I knew (more pre-
cisely: there was the knowledge in me) that Father had
been away from France for a long while, that he had been
deputed by some Social Service Group to make investiga-
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EPILOGUE
tions bearing on his charities, in some distant land. (A
study of conditions in foreign penitentiaries, or something
of the sort.) He had had so far to go that it was as if he were
never to return. I knew, too, exactly how we had felt regard-
ing his departure; it had been for us all as welcome as it
was unexpected. I knew that, once I had escaped his leading-
strings, I had married Gise. Then we had taken possession
of the flat and made a clean sweep of everything within it,
selling off the furniture, handing over Father’s belongings
to the Sisters, pulling down walls and thoroughly trans-
forming the whole place. (But, in the dream, oddly enough,
these changes were not the changes that I actually made.
Thus, though, in the dream, the hall had been repainted
light yellow as it is now, the carpet was red, not brown,
and, where the console-table now is, stood the old oak
grandfather’s clock Father used to have in the morning-
room.) There is much more than this; in fact the list of
things I knew would run to many pages. Thus I knew quite
definitely that our bedroom, Gise’s and mine (where, be
it noted, nothing took place, in the dream) was the room
that had been Father’s, and that it had come to look like
Anne’s bedroom in her Paris house. Still more noteworthy
is that I knew that Leon had not had time that morning
to tidy up the flat and our big bed was still unmade ; and I
was appalled at the thought that Father would be sure to
enter our room. There were hosts of other details of our
domestic life and circumstances that I knew. One of the
most striking is that, though my brother played no part
whatever in the dream, I knew that Jacques, desperately
jealous, had moved to Switzerland soon after our marriage,
and . . .
There, abruptly, the writing ended. . . . Antoine felt no desire
now to complete it. He merely added a marginal note in pencil.
Look up all that’s been written on the subject by
authorities on the phenomena of dreams.
Then, after folding the sheets, he put a kettle on the gas for
his inhalation.
Presently, his head cocooned in towels, eyes closed and cheeks
streaming, he was drawing in deep breaths of the healing
873 FF*
SUMMER, 1914
vapour — his thoughts still busy with his dream. It suddenly
struck him that its whole theme betokened an uneasy con-
science, a sense of responsibility, indeed of guilt, which in the
waking state his pride kept in abeyance. ‘And it’s a fact,’ he
murmured ; ‘I’ve no reason to feel proud of my behaviour since
Father’s death.’ He had in mind not only the luxurious installa-
tion of his home, but also his liaison with Anne, his incursions
into Parisian night-life — all symptons of a steadily increasing
self-indulgence. ‘A regular Rake’s Progress,’ he ruefully ad-
mitted to himself. ‘And, on top of it all, I’ve lost the greater
part of the fortune left me by my father.’ He had spent a good
half of his father’s personal estate on improvements to the
house; as for the remainder, dissatisfied with the low yield of
the investments made by prudent M. Thibault, he had sold
them out and replaced them by Russian stock, which had
recently dropped to zero. ‘Well, well ! It’s a fool’s game, nursing
vain regrets,’ he told himself. It was thus that he had come to
call his scruples. And yet — his dream was evidence of this — in
his heart of hearts, he cherished still the middle-class respect
for a -‘family fortune,’ slowly amassed and handed down from
father to son. And, although answerable to no -one but himself,
he felt ashamed of having squandered in less than a year, a
patrimony built up by the industry and prudence of several
generations.
He uncovered his head for a few seconds, took some breaths
of fresh air and dabbed his swollen eyes ; then buried his head
again under the swathe of moist, warm towels.
His musings on those spendthrift months before the war
linked up with the depression that had come over him the
previous afternoon, after Gise had left, when roaming through
his spacious laboratory, abandoned now to dust and solitude,
and his pompously entitled ‘Record Room,’ with its pigeon-
holes for case-books, and racks of brand-new, numbered and
lettered filing-cases — all empty. He had entered, too, the
lavishly equipped Surgery, which had never once been used.
And there his thoughts had harked back to the humble little
flat on the ground floor in which he had started his career, the
useful career of an energetic young doctor — and he had realized
874
EPILOGUE
that, after his father’s death, he had given a wrong direction to
his life.
The inhaler was cooling down, the jet of steam diminishing.
Throwing aside the soaked towels, he dried his face, then went
back to the bedroom. Facing the mirror, he tested his voice.
‘Ah . . . Eh . . . Ah . . . Oh . . .’ Though still hoarse, it
had regained its timbre, and he felt his throat clear for the
moment.
‘Twenty minutes’ breathing exercises. Then ten minutes’
rest. After that I’ll pack my things and, as I can’t see Philip
to-day, take the first train to Maisons.’
On his way to the station, as the car was crossing the Tuileries
Gardens, his gaze roved idly from the statues dotted amongst
the lawns and gleaming white under the morning sun, to the
graceful outlines of the Arc du Carrousel blurred by a haze of
tenuous blue. And suddenly there came back to him how on a
May morning like this he and Anne had met nearby, in the
Louvre courtyard, and a new thought waylaid him. He called
to the driver.
‘Take me to the entrance of the Bois. By the Rue Spontini,
please.’
When they were near the Battaincourts’ house, he told the
chauffeur to drive slowly and leant out of the window. All the
shutters were closed; the gateway was shut. On the porter’s
lodge hung a notice.
FOR SALE
THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
Inner Courtyard. Garage. Garden
Under for sale the words or to let had been chalked in.
The car was slowly passing alongside the garden wall.
Antoine felt nothing, literally nothing: neither emotion, nor
regret. And now he wondered what had persuaded him to make
this pointless pilgrimage.
‘Turn back, please,’ he called to the taximan, ‘and drive to
Saint-Lazare station.’
‘Yes,’ he said to himself almost at once, as if nothing had
875
SUMMER, 1914
interrupted his previous train of thought. ‘Yes, I was fooling
myself to the top of my bent when I decided that I had to
reorganize my professional career. “Reorganize !” Why, instead
of furthering my work, all those material facilities put a stop to
it. All the machinery was there, and running smoothly — only it
turned out nothing. Everything was set for some big, epoch-
making enterprise. And, in reality, I just stood put, twiddling
my thumbs!’ Suddenly he recalled his brother’s attitude to-
wards the fortune left them by their father, Jacques’ high disdain
for money — which Antoine at the time had thought so fatuous.
‘But Jacques was right. How much better we’d understand
each other, he and I, to-day! Money acts like a poison.
Especially money one’s “come into,” unearned capital. I’d
have been done for — but for the war. I should never have got
the money-virus out of my system. I had come to think one
can buy everything; and to regard the habit of doing little
work oneself and making others work for one as the birthright
of the well-to-do. Without a blush I’d have taken personally the
credit for any discovery made by Jousselin or Studler in my
laboratory. A profiteer — that’s what I was in a fair way of
becoming. I enjoyed the mastery that money gives one, the
deference that wealth ensured to me. And I’d almost come to
find this deference quite natural, and to believe that my money
really made me a superior being. Pretty disgusting that, when
one thinks about it ! And there’s something more ; all contacts
between a wealthy man and those around him are tainted with
suspicion, falsified. I was already getting to mistrust everything
and everybody. That’s one of the insidious ways money has of
rotting a man’s character. Yes, I was beginning to wonder, even
where my best friends were concerned : “Now why did he say
that? Is it my cheque-book that he’s getting at?” Pretty foul,
that ! Pretty foul !’
So bitter was the self-reproach that came of stirring up the
dregs of his past life, that he felt a vast relief at finding the taxi
had reached Saint-Lazare. And as he pushed his way through
the crowd around the booking-offices, he hardly noticed the
effort that it cost him — so glad he was of this distraction from
his thoughts.
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EPILOGUE
‘A first — no, a third-class ticket for Maisons-Laffitte, please.
When does the next train leave?’
He had rarely travelled ‘third.’ And in doing so now, he felt
a kind of Spartan satisfaction.
7
At Maisons-Laffitte
Clo TILDE had knocked at the door. Balancing the tray
on one hand, she waited some moments, then knocked again.
No answer. Vexed at the thought that Antoine had gone out
without having his early cup of milk and rolls, she opened
the door.
The room was in darkness. Antoine was still in bed. He had
heard the knock, but, as usual in the mornings before his
inhalation, his voice was so feeble that he did not think it
worth while trying to say ‘Come in !’ He endeavoured to convey
this by signs to Clotilde.
Though he accompanied his curious gestures with a reassuring
smile, the worthy woman remained standing on the threshold,
her eyebrows arched in consternation. Had he not come and
had a nice talk with her in the kitchen last night, soon after
his arrival? What could have happened? The idea crossed her
mind that he had had a stroke and was partially paralysed.
Guessing her thought, Antoine smiled still more genially and
beckoned her towards the bed. Then, taking the writing-pad
and pencil lying on the bedside table, he scribbled :
Slept well. But Vve never any voice in the mornings.
She slowly puzzled out the words, gazed at him incredulously,
then blurted out :
‘That’s as it may be, but we didn’t look to see you in this
state. Them Boches have made a nice job of you, sir, to be
sure.’
877
SUMMER, 1914
She went to the window and drew up the Venetians. A burst
of sunlight flooded the room. The sky was blue and through a
wreathed trellis of Virginia creeper spanning the wooden
balcony^ Antoine could see the fir-trees in the garden and,
further off, the tree- tops of the Saint-Germain woods, dappled
with early green and lightly swaying in the morning breeze.
Clotilde came back to the bedside.
‘Will you be able to eat, sir, seeing the state you’re in?’ she
enquired anxiously, as she filled the cup with hot milk. While
Antoine broke some bread into the cup, she moved back a step
and stared at him, her hands thrust in her apron pockets. He
had so much difficulty in swallowing that she could not refrain
from comment.
‘We never dreamt you were that ill, sir. When the news
came that you’d been gassed, I said to myself, “Anyhow it
ain’t so bad as if the Master had been wounded.” But seemingly
it’s just as bad. I’m not like my sister Adrienne ; there’s nothing
she don’t know about diseases. When you wrote us to go with
Mademoiselle Gise to Madame Fontanin’s hospital, Adrienne
was pleased no end. “That’s fine!” says she. “I’m going to
nurse wounded soldiers.” Then I says to her: “See here, Adri-
enne, I’ll do all the chores and cooking that they want — I
ain’t work-shy — but as for nursing wounded soldiers, no, it
ain’t my line.” So I stayed back here, and Adrienne went to
work for the ladies at the hospital. I don’t complain, though
I have to keep at it from morn till night. There’s a sight too
much work in this hostel as they call it for one woman, without
a help, and that’s the truth. But I’d rather slave twenty-four
hours a day here than have to go paddling in blood and gore
at that there hospital, like Adrienne I’
Antoine smiled. Still, he reflected, it was a pity she had this
prejudice against hospital work. In default of Gise, it would have
been rather pletisant to be nursed back to health by this simple,
devoted creature.
To show that he appreciated the arduousness of her daily
task, he pursed his lips sympathetically and slowly moved his
head from side to side.
‘Oh,’ she hastily put in, seized by compunction, ‘when all’s
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EPILOGUE
said and done, it ain’t so tiring as it sounds. The ladies are away
nearly all day, at the hospital. And I’ve only Monsieur Daniel
and Madame Jenny and the kiddie at lunchtime.’
More familiar than in the past — it was as if the war years
had levelled out certain deferences — she began airing her
opinions of everyone in the household, with the utmost freedom.
The spate of words was deafening, but Antoine picked up here
and there a phrase. ‘Mademoiselle Gise, she’s always kindness
itself.’ ‘You can’t never talk to Madame Fontanin; ’tain’t that
she’s really so stand-offish, but she doesn’t make you feel at
ease.’ ‘Madame Nicole now, she’s a proper harum-scarum, but
you can’t say “No” to her.’ ‘Madame Jenny ain’t much of a
talker, but her head’s screwed on the right way, and she’s a fine
worker.’ But all her talk centered on the ‘Kiddie,’ in tones of
love and admiration.
‘Ah, he’s a promising child, and no mistake. He takes after
the poor Master, he’ll make himself obeyed.’ (Yes, Antoine
reflected, we jnustn’t forget he’s Father’s grandson.) ‘Why he’d
drive us all crazy if we let him have his way. You can’t imagine
what that kiddie’s like, sir. Like a bit of quicksilver, a proper
little imp of mischief. He won’t obey no one. A good thing
Monsieur Daniel’s always there to look after him; you can’t
trust him out of your sight a moment. Anyhow it keeps Monsieur
Daniel busy, else he’d be moping about alone there all day,
with nothing to do but chew his “elastic.” ’ She wagged her
head knowingly. ‘But I’ve a notion, sir, there’s some these days
who ain’t half glad they got a leg that’s ailing.’
Antoine reached for his writing-pad. '‘Leon?' he wrote.
‘Leon, poor fellow !’ But it seemed she had little news to give
of Antoine’s old butler. (He had been taken prisoner near
Charleroi after a fortnight’s active service, on the day following
his arrival in the front line. On learning the number of his
prisoner’s camp, Antoine had instructed Clotilde to send him a
hamper of food each month. Each hamper was acknowledged
by Leon on a three- word postcard. He never gave any news
about himself.) ‘What do you think he wrote and asked us
for? A flute ! Mademoiselle Gise bought one and sent it
to him.’
879
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine had finished his bread and milk. Clotilde took up
the tray.
‘I’ve got to go down and help Madame Jenny. Tuesday’s her
washing-day and she can’t lift the copper by herself. A kiddie
dirties a lot of linen, that’s sure.’ Going out, she paused in the
doorway to give Antoine a parting glance of inspection. Sud-
denly the flat features took on a meditative air.
‘Eh, Monsieur Antoine, who’d ever have dreamed it — all we
been through in the last few years. All these changes ! As I often
says to Adrienne : “If the old Master could come back on earth
... If he could see all that’s happened since he left us . . !” ’
As soon as she had gone Antoine began dressing. He took
his time about it; there was no hurry. He intended to give
himself a thorough course of treatment before going downstairs.
‘If the old Master could come back . . !’ Clotilde’s remark had
reminded him of his dream. What an ascendancy Father still has
over us ! he thought.
It was past eleven when he re-opened the window — which he
had closed so as to do his breathing exercises without being
heard.
A man’s voice floated up to him from the garden. ‘Hi, Paul !
Get down from there! Come over here.’ Like a distant echo
came a woman’s voice, calm and clear. ‘Now, Paul, be a good
boy. Do what Uncle Dan tells you.’
He stepped out on to the balcony and glanced down across
the curtain of Virginia creeper. Immediately under him was the
narrow terrace overlooking the old fosse that separated the
garden from the forest. In the shadow of the two great plane-
trees — Madame de Fontanin’s favourite retreat in the old days
— Daniel was lounging in a wicker-work chair, a book on his
knees. Some yards from him a little boy in a pale blue jumper
was trying to climb the parapet, with the aid of a small bucket
placed bottom upwards, evidently for that purpose, beside the
wall. At the far end of the terrace, through the open, sunlit door-
way of what used to be the gardener’s cottage, Jenny could be
seen bending over a wash-tub, her sleeves rolled up, arms flecked
with soapsuds.
‘Come along, Paul !’
880
EPILOGUE
A lock of red-brown tousled hair glinted in the sunlight ; the
child had deigned to turn. But, to show his independence, he
composedly sat down on the ground and, drawing his spade
towards him, began filling the bucket with sand.
When, a few moments later, Antoine came down the steps
little Paul was still seated at the same spot.
Daniel called, ‘Come and say Good Morning to Uncle
Antoine !’
Squatting at the foot of the wall, the child went on ladling
sand into the bucket, as if he had not heard. As Antoine
approached he lowered his head still more. Feeling himself
seized, swung off his feet, he struggled for a moment with his
captor ; then with a merry laugh, gave in.
‘So Uncle Antoine’s a nasty man?’
‘Oo yes ! Awful nasty!’
Breathless with the exertion, Antoine set down the child and
came back to Daniel. But no sooner was he seated than little
Paul ran up, clambered upon his knees and snuggling against
his tunic, pretended to fall asleep.
Daniel had not stirred from his chair. He was wearing an old
striped tennis-shirt without a tie, and shabby dark-grey trousers.
On the foot of his artificial limb he had a black boot ; on the
other, which was bare, a carpet slipper. He had filled out; his
features had still their grace of outline, but they had coarsened.
With his blue, stubbly chin and over-long hair he brought to
mind one of those elderly provincial actors who, careless of
their person in the daytime, nightly regain something of the
old glamour by benefit of footlights. Antoine, who ever since
rising had been busy attending to his throat, noticed — without,
however, attaching undue importance to it — that the young
man, after languidly shaking hands with him, did not vouchsafe
the least enquiry about his health. (As a matter of fact, however,
they had compared notes on the previous evening regarding
their respective plights.) At a loss what to say, Antoine made a
vague, interrogative gesture towards the large, album-like
volume Daniel had just closed and placed on the gravel
path.
‘Oh, that’s an old Round the World, the travel magazine, you
88 1
S.UMMER, 1914
know. For the year 1877 !’ Picking up the book, he fluttered the
pages idly. ‘It’s full of pictures. We have the whole set in the
house.’
Absent-mindedly Antoine was fondling little Paul’s hair ; the
child seemed lost in a brown study, his head pillowed on his
uncle’s chest and his eyes wide open.
‘What’s the news this morning? Have you seen the papers?’
Antoine asked.
‘No.’
‘They gave us to understand, these last few days, that the
Supreme War Council proposed to extend Foch’s command to
the Italian front.’
‘Really!’
‘I dare say it’s been announced officially to-day.’
Jean Paul wriggled down from Antoine’s knee, as if he had
just discovered he was bored. In one breath Uncle Dan and
Uncle Antoine asked :
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’m going to mummy.’
Hopping twice on each foot in turn, the little boy scampered
towards the gardener’s cottage, under the amused observation
of the two grown-ups. Daniel took a packet of chewing-gum
from his pocket and held it out to Antoine.
‘No thanks.’
‘It helps to pass the time,’ Daniel explained. ‘I’ve given up
smoking.’
He put a large chunk into his mouth and began chewing.
Antoine smiled.
‘That reminds me of an experience I had in the war. At
Villers-Bretennoux. We’d installed our dressing station in a
farmhouse that had been used for some months by an American
Red Cross Unit. Well, our orderlies had to spend a whole day
chipping the lumps of chewing-gum from walls and doors and
chairs and tables. I never saw such a disgusting mess 1 The filthy
stuff was as hard as cement; they had to chisel it off. If the
Anglo-Saxon occupation lasts another year or two, the furniture
in north-east France will lose its form completely, buried under
a foot or two of solid chewing-gum.’ A slight access of coughing
882
EPILOGUE
made him pause for a moment. ‘Like those rocks in the Pacific
. . . you know . . . which have become . . . huge mounds of
guano.’
Daniel smiled. Like Jacques, Antoine had always been par-
ticularly susceptible to the charm of Daniel’s smile, and it gave
him pleasure now to see that smile had lost nothing of its
fascination. True there was some grossness now about the
features, but the upper lip curled up in the same odd, lopsided
way and with the same tantalizing slowness, while a roguish
twinkle crept into the half-shut eyes.
Antoine could not stop coughing; he made a gesture of
mingled vexation and disheartenment.
‘You see . . . what a wheezy . . . old crock I am these
days.’ He got the words out with an effort. On recovering his
breath, he added : ‘Yes, as Clotilde said just now, “them Boches
have made a nice job of me.” And even so I suppose we must
count ourselves amongst the privileged few.’
‘You, perhaps,’ Daniel said hastily, under his breath.
There followed a minute’s silence, broken, this time, by
Daniel.
‘You asked me if I’d read the papers. I hadn’t — I read them
as little as possible. I’m only too apt to think about — all that.
I’ve lost the power of thinking about anything else. And as for
reading those communiques, when one knows, as we do, exactly
what the words signify. “Slight activity in such-and-such a
sector.” “Successful raid at such-and-such a place.” No !’ He
let his head sink on to the back of the chair, and closed his eyes.
‘One has to have gone “over the top,” to have taken part in
an infantry attack, to . . . understand. So long as I was in the
cavalry, I knew nothing about war. Still I’d been in one or
two charges. A charge — that, too, doesn’t bear talking about.
But it’s nothing compared to an infantry attack, waiting behind
the parapet for zero hour, and going over with fixed bayonets.’
He shivered, opened his eyes and stared up for a moment at
the tree-tops, chewing his gum ragefully. ‘Actually how many
of us are there, all told, in the back areas, who know what it’s
like? The men who’ve come back from the front — how many
are they? And, anyhow, why should they talk about it? No,
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SUMMER, 1914
they can’t, or they won’t say anything. They know that nobody
would understand them.’
He fell silent. The two men stayed for some minutes without
exchanging a word, without even looking at each other. Then
Antoine spoke in a slow, uncertain tone, pausing at whiles to
cough.
‘There are times when I tell myself this is the last war ; that
it’s unthinkable there should ever be another. Yes, sometimes
I feel sure of it. But there are other times when . . . I’m not
so sure.’
Daniel chewed away in silence, gazing into the distance. His
face was expressionless.
Antoine said no more. The strain of speaking for several
minutes on end was too much for him. But inwardly he followed
up the same train of thought, for the hundredth or thousandth
time. ‘When one reckons up dispassionately all that stands in
the way of “peace among men” — it’s appalling! How many
centuries will elapse before the course of moral evolution
(assuming there is such a process) has purged man of his con-
genital intolerance, his innate respect for brute force, and the
insensate pleasure the human mind feels in beating an enemy
to his knees and forcibly imposing his own ways of living and
feeling on others weaker than himself, who live differently, feel
otherwise? And then, of course, there’s the political factor, the
self-interest of governments. When a government’s in a tight
corner it’s always a temptation for the men in power, the men
who can start a war and make others bear the brunt of it, to
fake up a casus belli — and save their precious skins. It’s such an
easy way out ; one hardly dares to hope that governments will
never have recourse to it again. Which can only be if that way
out is marked : No thoroughfare; if pacifist ideas have taken root
so firmly in men’s minds, and become so widespread, as to set
up an impassible barrier against the war-mongers. And that’s
too much to hope for, as things are. What’s more, even if
pacifism triumphed, would it really mean that peace had come
to stay? Even if some day, in certain lands of Europe, pacifist
parties held the reins of power, how can one be sure they would
not yield to the temptation of starting a war for the satisfaction
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EPILOGUE
of imposing, by force, their pacifist ideology on the other
countries that did not share their views?
Clotilde’s voice rang out gaily from the kitchen door.
‘Now then. Master Paul !’
She came towards them carrying a tray on which were a bowl
of porridge, some stewed prunes and a mug of milk, and placed
them on the garden table.
‘Hurry up, Paul !’ cried Daniel.
The little boy came running across the sunlit terrace as fast
as his small, sturdy legs could carry him. The blue of his jumper,
faded by repeated washings, exactly matched the pale blue of
his eyes. Once again Antoine was struck by his resemblance to
Jacques, when Jacques was the same age. ‘The same forehead,’
he mused, ‘the same ridge in his hair, the same rather blotchy
complexion with a chequerwork of tiny freckles round the small,
wrinkled nose.’ Stalwart Clotilde had swung him off his feet
and was settling him on a chair. He submitted docilely to her
attentions. Antoine gave him a smile, but little Paul, supposing
he was being laughed at, looked away, then shot a furtive,
hostile glance in Antoine’s direction. There was the same elusive
quality in his regard that used to be in Jacques’; changeful as
an April sky, his eyes were now laughing or cajoling, now fretful
or, as at the present moment, fiercely defiant, hard as steel. But
behind all these surface fluctuations always their expression
remained keen, precociously alert.
Jenny came through the sunlight towards them; her sleeves
were rolled up, her hands swollen from the hot water, her apron
spattered with suds. She gave Antoine a brief, affectionate smile.
‘What sort of night did you have? . . . No, my hands arc all
wet. . . . Did you sleep all right?’
‘Better than usual, thanks.’
Watching Jenny now, Antoine could hardly believe that this
buxom young woman, who accepted the duties of motherhood,
the drudgery of menial tasks, with such natural ease, had once
been that stiff, reserved young person in a dark, severely cut
tailor-made costume whom Jacques had brought to his place
on the day of mobilization.
She turned to Daniel.
885
SUMMER, 1914
‘Please be a dear and see he eats his porridge. I’ve got to go
back. I haven’t hung out my washing to dry yet.” She tucked
a napkin into her son’s collar and fondled the little bird-like
neck. ‘Now Paul, be a good boy and eat your porridge. Uncle
Dan will help you. I’ll be back in a moment.’
“Yes, Mam-ma.” He made a little pause between the
syllables, as Daniel and Jenny always did.
Daniel had risen from his easy-chair and seated himself beside
the child. He had evidently been following up his previous
train of thought, for no sooner was his sister gone than he went
on as if there had been no interruption :
‘And there’s something else, something one can hardly find
words for, and of which nobody who hasn’t been at the front
has the least notion. I mean that sort of miracle which always
took place when one went “up the line.” For one thing, that
incredible sense of liberation which came of knowing one was
a mere puppet in the hands of fate, that one had made a blind
surrender of one’s will, and that one had no personal choice about
anything at all. And then’ — his voice was vibrant with emotion
— ‘there was that marvellous camaraderie of the trenches, that
feeling of brotherhood which came of sharing the same hard-
ships, the same perils. . . . One had only to be moved back
into a rest-camp, a few hours’ march behind the lines, to realize
how miraculous that mood had been — and to become an
individual again.’
Antoine nodded without speaking. His own memories of the
war were chiefly of mud and blood ; but he understood what
Daniel meant: that unique fellowship of the men under fire,
co-partners in calamity, in which, as in a mystical communion,
the individual self was fined away and merged in a collective soul.
Intimidated by Antoine’s presence, little Paul submitted to
being spoon-fed by Daniel, whose dexterity in tipping spoonfuls
of porridge into the child’s open mouth, while carrying on a
conversation, proved him no novice in the technique of male
nursemaid.
It suddenly struck Antoine that this little scene was as unpre-
dictable four years ago as anything could be. Who ever could
have foreseen Daniel ill-dressed, decrepit, playing the part of
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nursemaid ; or the existence of this child, son of Jacques and
Jenny? ‘And yet,’ he mused, ‘thus and thus it has turned out —
and I feel little or no wonder. It’s amazing how what is usurps
the mind — to the exclusion of all the might-have-beens. Once
anything has happened, we seem to lose the power of even
conceiving that it might equally well not have happened. Or
could have happened quite otherwise . . .’For some moments
he let his thoughts drift on in desultory speculation. Then he
chuckled to himself, ‘If Goiran were here and heard me. I’d
be in for a full-dress lecture on Free Will . . . !’
‘Now then, mind what you’re up to !’ grumbled Uncle Dan.
The spoon-feeding process had become more ticklish now that
porridge had given place to plums. The little boy’s eyes kept
on straying towards his mother, who was busy hanging out
washing on the wire-netting round the fowl-run. Now and then
Daniel had to wait for quite a while, the spoon poised in mid-
air, till Master Paul condescended to open his mouth again.
But he showed no impatience.
Once Jenny had hung out her washing, she hastened to come
to her brother’s aid. Antoine watched her crossing a second time
the sunlit terrace. She had taken off her apron, and was pulling
down her sleeves as she walked. Daniel waved away her offer
of assistance.
‘No, don’t bother. We’ve finished.’
‘What about our milk?’ she gaily cried. ‘Hurry up ! What
ever will Uncle Antoine say if Paul hasn’t drunk his milk.’
The child had already raised his arm to push away the cup ;
now he paused and glared at Antoine defiantly. He was evi-
dently expecting to be lectured. But when, instead, he glimpsed
a twinkle in Antoine’s eye, a smile of humorous connivance,
Paul hesitated, changed his mind. The little face lit up with
mischievous delight and, gazing all the time at Antoine as if
inviting him to admire this marvellous docility, the child drank
off his cup of milk without more ado.
‘Now, Paul, come along to bye-bye,’ Jenny said as she re-
moved the bib and helped her son down from the chair. ‘Then
Mummy can have her lunch in peace, with Uncle Dan and
Uncle Antoine.’
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SUMMER, 1914
The two men were left to themselves.
Daniel rose, walked over to the nearest plane-tree, tore off
a strip of bark, gazed at it listlessly, then crumbled it in his
hand. Taking another piece of gum from his pocket, he began
chewing again. Finally he went back to the easy-chair and
once more stretched himself on it.
Antoine kept silence. He was thinking of Daniel, of the war,
of that ‘mystical communion’ of the men in the front trenches.
He remembered a remark made to him at the Le Mousquier
mess by young Lubin — who reminded him in so many ways of
his former assistant, Manuel Roy: ‘You may say what you like,
but war has a beauty all its own.’ There had been a break in
the young man’s voice and a faraway look in his eyes as he
said this. Of course, Antoine reflected, Lubin was a youngster
of twenty who had been shifted at a moment’s notice from the
lecture-rooms of the Sorbonne into active service, pitchforked
from playing-fields into the front line. He had not yet made a
start in life when he was caught by the war ; he had no career
to leave behind him. That was one reason why he could talk
so airily about war, and even find a ‘glan4our’ in it. But,
Antoine mused, what does that ‘glamour’ come to when one
thinks of all the horrors that I’ve witnessed?
Into his mind a memory flashed of a certain night in early
September — in the course of that long-drawn-out struggle
which Antoine always thought of as ‘the fighting at Provins’
but which the world knew as ‘the Battle of the Marne’ — when
he had had to move his Casualty Clearing Station at a moment’s
notice, under a violent bombardment. After successfully
evacuating the wounded he had managed to crawl, followed by
his orderlies, along a trench, to a somewhat less heavily shelled
area, where there was a decapitated farmhouse whose thick
walls and vaulted cellar seemed to offer temporary shelter.
But just then the enemy guns had lengthened the range ; shells
came dropping nearer and nearer every moment. The first thing
Antoine had done was to send all his men down into the cellar
and close the trap-door on them. After that he had gone back
to the entrance and stood leaning against the door-post, waiting
for a lull in the gunfire. It was then the thing had happened.
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EPILOGUE
There had come a shell-burst only thirty or forty yards away,
making him stagger back into the living-room under a shower
of bricks and rubble. And there, in the darkness, he had run
into his men grouped together in the centre of the room. He
guessed why they were there. Seeing that their officer disdained
to join them in their ‘funk-hole,’ they had pushed up the trap-
door and of their own accord had lined up silently behind him.
‘We were in a devilish tight corner just then,’ Antoine re-
flected, ‘and I must admit this proof of my men’s devotion, their
loyalty, gave me a thrill of pleasure that I’ll never forget. Yes,
if some young fire-eater like Lubin had said to me that night,
“War has a beauty all its own,” I’d have agreed likely as not.’
Then, taking himself up angrily, he said :
‘No!’
Unwittingly he had spoken the word aloud. Daniel turned in
surprise.
‘What I meant to say . . ,” he began ; then excusing himself
with a smile, gave up attempting to explain, and fell silent.
From a window on the first floor came a sound of crying:
little Paul protesting against being put to bed.
8
Antoine's First Talk with Jenny
Jenny had tucked the child up in his cot and was waiting
for him to fall asleep. Meanwhile, as was her daily practice, she
changed into her working kit, so as to be able to go to the
hospital immediately after lunch and take up her duties in the
linen-room. Happening to pass one of the windows, she had a
glimpse across the light tulle curtain of the two men conversing
under the plane-trees. Antoine’s voice was too low-pitched to
reach her, but Daniel’s had sudden bursts of shrillness which,
though she did not catch the words, were clearly audible.
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SUMMER, 1914
Sadness fell on her remembering the two young men as they
once had been — active, robust and cheerful, full of ambitious
projects for the future. War had made them what they were
to-day . . . Still they, anyhow, had come through it alive.
Their health would improve ; Antoine would recover his voice,
Daniel get used to his lameness. One day they would pick up
again the broken threads of their careers. But for Jacques — all
was ended. Ah, could he, too, have been alive this bright May
morning ; she would have left everything to follow him, to the
ends of the earth if needs be, and they would have brought up
their son together ! But no — all was over . . . for ever.
She could no longer hear Daniel’s voice. Going up to the
window, she saw Antoine walking towards the house. Since
yesterday she had been seeking an opportunity of speaking to
him alone. A glance towards the baby told her he had gone
asleep; she rapidly did up her skirt and tidied up the room,
then went to the door and held it open.
Antoine was climbing the stairs slowly, clinging to the
banisters. When he looked up and saw her, she smiled and,
laying a finger on her lips, went towards him.
‘He’s asleep. Come and have a peep at him-’
Too out of breath to reply, he followed her on tiptoe.
It was a very large room and the ‘Jouy’ wall-paper with a
gay pictorial design in blue increased the effect of airiness. At
the far end were two identical twin beds with the child’s cot
between them. This Antoine conjectured, must have been the
bedroom of M. and Mme. de Fontanin in the past. But he was
puzzled by the fact that both of the full-size beds were appar-
ently in use; the bedside-table next to each was strewn with
miscellaneous toilet articles. Hung on the wall between the
beds, was a portrait of Jacques, life-size and arresting as a living
presence. It was an oil painting in the modern style. Antoine
had never seen it before.
Little Jean Paul was sleeping, curled up between the sheets,
one shoulder tucked under the bolster, his hair ruffled, the pink,
moist hps a little parted. His free arm lay on the counterpane,
but there was no slackness in its poise — the small fist was
clenched like a boxer’s.
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EPILOGUE
Antoine pointed to the portrait, throwing a questioning
glance at Jenny.
‘1 brought it back with me from Switzerland,’ she whispered.
Her gaze settled on the picture, then sped back to the child.
‘Isn’t it extraordinary, the likeness between them !’
‘Ah, but you should have known Jacques when he was Paul’s
age . . .’
Yet, he reflected, it doesn’t follow in the least that they’ll
resemble each other in character. This child’s mental make-up
must have countless elements which did not enter into that of
Jacques. He followed up his thought aloud, in a low voice :
‘Isn’t it strange to think of all the multitude of ancestors,
near and remote, that have contributed their share to this little
life? Which influences, one wonders, will predominate? Im-
possible to guess. Birth is a sort of miracle, bringing something
unique into the world ; all the elements that go to make up a
human being may come from the past, but the way they’re
combined is always wholly new.’
Abruptly, without opening his eyes or unclenching his fist,
the child drew up his arm and crooked it over his face, as if to
screen himself from their gaze. Antoine and Jenny glanced at
each other, smiling.
Strange, too, he thought, as silently the two of them retreated
to the far end of the room, how strange that of all the possi-
bilities of different beings Jacques had within him, this one
alone — this particular composite of elements that is Jean Paul
— and no other — should have fulfilled itself and been called into
life !
Still keeping her voice rather low, Jenny asked :
‘What was Daniel, poor fellow, talking to you about just now?
He seemed quite worked up.’
‘About the war. However much one tries to keep off it, one
always comes back to that topic — worse luck !’
Jenny’s face grew hard.
‘It’s a subject about which I’ve given up talking ... to
Daniel.’
‘Really?’
‘He’s too fond of airing opinions which make me blush for
891
SUMMER, 1914
him. Opinions he picks up from the nationalist newspapers.
Jacques would never have allowed him to say such things in his
presence.’
What papers does she read, I wonder? Antoine thought. The
Humanite most likely, in memory of Jacques.
Suddenly she drew closer to him.
‘On the evening of the day of mobilization — I can still see
the place, just beside a sentry-box in front of the Chambre des
Deputes — Jacques clutched my arm and said to me : “Remember
this, Jenny. As from to-day we’ll have to divide people into
two classes : those who tolerate the idea of war, and those who
abhor it!”’
For some moments she remained in a brown study ; Jacques’
words were echoing in her brain. Then with a stifled sigh she
turned, walked to a writing-desk the flap of which was open and
sat down in front of it. She signed to Antoine to draw up a chair.
But he remained standing, looking at the portrait. It showed
Jacques seated, gazing up towards the light, a hand splayed
on his thigh. There was a certain bravado in the pose, but it
was true to life; Jacques often used to sit in just that attitude.
The lock of reddish hair made a vivid streak of colour across
his forehead. (Antoine thought: When he’s older, the child’s
hair will darken to that shade.) The deep-set eyes, the bitter
droop of the large mouth, and the tautness of the chin gave the
face a look of anguish almost painful in its intensity. The
background had been left unfinished.
‘It was painted in June, 1914,’ Jenny explained, ‘by an
Englishman named Paterson. I understand he’s fighting now
in the ranks of the Bolshevists. Vanheede had brought the
picture to his place, and he presented it to me, at Geneva.
Vanheede’s that nice young Dutchman who was so devoted to
Jacques. I think I mentioned him in my letters to you, didn’t I?’
One memory leading to another, she gradually gave Antoine
a full account of her experiences in Switzerland. She had never
breathed a word of them to others and it was with evident
pleasure that she unburdened her heart to Antoine. She
described how Vanheede had led her to the Hotel du Globe
and shown her Jacques’ room. ‘It was a small, dark garret; the
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EPILOGUE
only window gave on to a landing,’ He had taken her to the
Landholt Cafe, to ‘Headquarters,’ and introduced her to the
survivors of the ‘Talking Shop’ group. Amongst them she had
found Stefany who had been on the Humanite staff in Jaures’
time ; Jacques had introduced him to her at Paris. Stefany had
succeeded in escaping to Switzerland, and had started a paper
there entitled Their Great War, and become one of the most
active members of the Geneva group of die-hard international-
ists. ‘Vanheede came with me to Basel, too.’ Her eyes grew
pensive.
Bending over the desk, she unlocked one of its drawers and
with extreme precaution, as if handling a precious relic, took
out a small bundle of manuscript. She held it for some moments
in her hands before passing it to Antoine.
Greatly mystified, Antoine fell to examining the sheets, and
at once something struck him about the handwriting.
. . . And yet here you are to-day, with loaded rifles in
your hands, ready blindly, at the first word of command,
to slaughter men you’ve never seen, whom you have no
reason to hate . . .
Suddenly he realized. What he had in his hands was Jacques’
Message, written shortly before his death. The sheets were
crumpled, covered with erasures, smeared with printer’s ink.
The handwriting was undoubtedly Jacques’, though haste and
fever had made it almost unrecognizable; in some places deeply
scored and rugged, in others wavering as a child’s.
Has the French State, has the German State, the right
to tear you away from your families and from your work
and to dispose of your lives against your most obvious
personal interests, against your will, your convictions, your
most human and legitimate instincts? What gave them
this appalling power over you, the power of life and death?
Your ignorance. Your apathy.
Antoine looked up.
‘It’s the rough draft of the Message.' Jenny’s voice was tense
with emotion. ‘Plattner gave it to me at Basel. He’s the book-
893
SUMMER, 1914
seller who saw to the printing of it. They’d kept the manuscript.
They told me . . .’
‘ “They?” Who do you mean?’
‘Plattner and a young German called Kappcl, who’d known
Jacques. He’s a doctor, and was awfully nice to me when I was
having my baby. They showed me the horrible little room where
Jacques lodged when he was writing that. And they went with
me to the hill-top from which the ’plane took off.’ As she spoke,
pictures were forming in her mind of her stay in the Swiss
frontier town crowded with troops and foreigners and spies.
While she described her experiences to Antoine, she seemed to
see again Frau Stumpf’s tumble-down house and the cell-like
room which Jacques had occupied, with its narrow dormer
window overlooking wharves and sidings black with coal-dust ;
the banks of the Rhine where he had walked, and the bridges
guarded by troops. How vividly it came back to her, her
journey to the plateau on the hill-top, in a decrepit vehicle
driven by Andreyev — the same that Jacques had used on his
last journey ! Plattner’s guttural voice still echoed in her ears.
‘Here’s where we scrambled up the hill-side. It was pitch dark.
Here we lay down to wait for daybreak. It was yonder, in that
notch between the hills that we first sighted the ’plane. It
landed over there, and Thibault climbed into it.’
‘I always wonder what were the thoughts that occupied his
mind during those hours of waiting on the hill-top,’ she said
in a low, brooding voice. ‘They tell me he walked away from
the others and lay down on the ground some distance off. He
must have had a presentiment of his death. What were his last
thoughts? I shall never know.’
Antoine, too, his eyes fixed on the portrait as he listened,
was musing on that lonely vigil on the hill-top, the coming of
the death-fraught ’plane — the fruitless sacrifice of his brother’s
life. What horrified him most, perhaps, was the tragic absurdity
of such heroism, as of so many forms of heroism — of almost all,
indeed. How many instances had he not seen in the war of
deeds of valour, sublime but senseless ! ‘Nearly always,’ he re-
flected, ‘it’s an error of judgment that leads men to these acts
of heroic folly — a blind belief in certain standards, certain views
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EPILOGUE
of life, as to which they’ve never stopped to ask themselves coolly,
dispassionately: “Are these views, these standards, worth the
sacrifice of my life?” ’ The cult of energy and will-power was
a second nature with Antoine ; yet he had an instinctive aversion
from heroism, and four years of war had only intensified this
aversion. He had not the least wish to belittle his brother’s act ;
Jacques had died in the defence of his convictions, he had been
true to himself up to the end — and such an end could inspire
nothing but respect. And yet whenever Antoine pondered on
Jacques’ ‘ideas’ he always came against an inconsistency that
riddled them through and through. How could Jacques, hating
as he did all forms of violence, both temperamentally and
intellectually — the fact that he had deliberately risked his life
in fighting against violence, in preaching fraternization and
‘sabotage’ of the war was proof of this — how could Jacques
have been for years a militant advocate of the Social Revolu-
tion, in other words an advocate of the most brutal form of
violence, the scientific, cold-blooded, merciless ferocity of the
doctrinaire? He could not bring himself to believe that Jacques
was so naive, or so ignorant of human nature, as to imagine
that the ‘Total Revolution’ he had staked his hopes on could
take place without involving the most shocking cruelty and
injustice, a hecatomb of countless innocent victims.
Wandering back from the perplexing face delineated in the
portrait, his gaze settled again on Jenny, who was continuing
her narrative. Her tone was calm, but her face seemed trans-
figured, illumined by a secret, boundless exaltation.
After all, he asked himself, what have I made of my own
life? What right have I to sit in judgment on others whose faith
impels them to extremist acts? Men who are bold enough to
attempt the impossible?
‘One of the things that distress me most,’ Jenny went on
after a short pause, ‘is the thought that he never knew I was
going to have a child.’ As she spoke she gathered up the sheets
and put them back in the drawer. Again she fell silent ; then as
if she were thinking aloud — ^Antoine was deeply touched by
this proof of her perfect trust in him — she murmured: ‘You
know. I’m ever so glad my little Paul was born at Basel, the
895
SUMMER, 1914
town where his father spent his last days on earth — where he
must have lived through the most intensely crowded hours of
his whole existence.’
Whenever she evoked the memory of Jacques, the blue eyes
darkened, a slight flush rose to her cheeks, and a strange ex-
pression settled for a moment on her face — a look of ardent,
insatiable yearning. Her love, Antoine thought, has left its
stamp on her for ever; and somehow, though he could not
account for it, the thought vexed him. He could not help feeling
that this love was rooted in absurdity. Between two people so
patently unsuited to each other as Jacques and Jenny, it could
only have arisen from a mutual misapprehension. A misap-
prehension which, had Jacques lived, would probably have
yielded to experience, but as things were, was shrined in
memory, irrefragable. The way she spoke about him made this
clear . . . For it was one of Antoine’s pet theories that such
extreme devotion is always based on misunderstanding, defect
of judgement, a sentimental fallacy. But for the false idea each
has of the other, it would be impossible for lovers to keep up
their mutual adoration.
‘My task,’ she said, ‘is none too easy; it’s to shape Jean Paul
into the son Jacques would have wished for. Sometimes that
task almost terrifies me.’ She looked up ; a gleam of pride shone
in her eyes, as if she were thinking; ‘But I’ve confidence in
myself.’ Aloud she said : ‘But I’ve confidence in our son.’
It was a joy to him to find her so courageous in her outlook
on the future. From the tone of some of her letters he had
expected to find her less sure of herself, less qualified for her
task. Now he realized how effectively she had resisted the dark
allurements of despair. Too often had he seen bereaved women
nursing their grief with morbid assiduity, so as to sublimate
their stricken love in their own eyes and the world’s. Jenny had
done nothing of the sort; she had shaken off these morbid
impulses, faced up to the situation, and reorganized her life
on healthy lines. He could not refrain from voicing his appre-
ciation.
‘ . . . and by acting thus, you showed the stuff that you
were made of,’ he concluded.
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EPILOGUE
She had heard him out in silence. Quite unaffectedly, she
replied :
‘1 don’t deserve any credit, really. What made things easier,
I imagine, was that Jacques and 1 had never really lived
together. His death made no change in the course of my daily
life. That helped me through the first period. Then baby
came — but even before he was born, his presence was a tremen-
dous help. I had something to live for: to bring up Jacques’
child and mine.’ Again she paused, before continuing. ‘It’s no
easy task, I assure you. Small though he is, Paul has a mind
of his own and he’s difficult to handle. Sometimes, you know,
he frightens me. . . .’ She cast him a keen, almost suspicious
glance. ‘But I suppose Daniel’s been talking to you about him?’
‘About Paul? No, hardly at all.’
Antoine guessed that brother and sister did not agree in their
views as to the child’s character, and that this difference of
opinion had led to a certain estrangement.
‘Daniel insists that Paul enjoys being disobedient. That’s un-
kind — and untrue. The matter’s much more complicated than
that. I’ve thought over it, deeply. It’s true that instinctively
the child says “No.” But it’s not bad will on his part; it’s a
need he feels for standing up for himself. Asserting himself, if
you prefer. As if he wanted to prove to himself that he exists.
And it’s so obviously the outcome of a natural impulse, some-
thing innate and irresistible, that one can’t be angry with him.
It’s an instinct with him, like the instinct of self-preservation.
And so, oftener than not, I can’t bring myself to punish him
when he’s been “naughty.” You see what I mean, don’t you?’
Antoine nodded, and his look invited her to continue. He
was slightly amused by her extreme earnestness, but deeply
interested.*
‘I knew you’d understand,’ she smiled, reassured by his
approval. ‘Of course you’re used to children, and I don’t sup-
pose that sort of thing surprises you. Personally, I always feel
I’m up against a mystery — in that strange unruliness of his.
Yes, often I watch my son disobeying me, with a sort of amaze-
ment, of apprehension — I could almost say “of awe” ; the same
feelings as I have in watching him grow up, develop, get to
897 GG
SUMMER, 1914
understand things. If he has a spill when he’s by himself in the
garden, he cries; but I’ve very rarely seen him cry, however
much he’s hurt himself, if any of us are in sight. If I offer him
a sweet, he’ll refuse it, for no apparent reason; but when my
back is turned, he’ll come and steal the box. Not out of greedi-
ness ; he won’t even try to open it. He’ll go and hide it under
the cushions on a sofa or bury it in his sand-heap. Why? With
the simple object, I suppose, of proving his independence. When
I scold him, he doesn’t say a word, but all his little muscles
stiffen up, his eyes change colour and their expression grows
so hard I daren’t go on scolding him. Somehow I can’t stand
out against that look — it’s hard as steel, but pure as well . . .
and oh so lonely ! I suppose Jacques had that look when he
was tiny. . . .’
‘So perhaps had you, Jenny!’ Antoine smiled.
She waved away the suggestion and went on at once :
‘But there’s this, too : if he flares up at the least constraint,
he’s equally responsive to the least show of affection. If when
he’s in the sulks, I can tempt him into my arms, he snuggles
up at once, kisses me and starts laughing. It’s as if there was
something hard inside him that had all of a sudden gone soft,
melted. As if he’d cast out an evil spirit that possessed him.’
‘I expect he’s even more disobedient with Gise, isn’t he?’
‘It’s not the same thing!’ A certain stiffness had come into
her tone. ‘When “Auntie Gi” is about nothing else counts for
him. He’s crazy about her !’
‘Can she get him to do what she wants?’
‘Even less than I or Daniel. He’d like to have her with him
all the time, but that’s because she bows to all his whims. And
the services he gets out of her are usually those he’d be too
proud to ask of anyone else : unbuttoning his trousers, for in-
stance, or fetching some object that he’s too small to reach.
And if I’m not there, never once does he say “Thank you” to
her. You should hear the way he orders her about ! One would
almost think . . .’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s not very
nice for Gise, what I’m going to say, but I believe it’s true;
yes, one would almost think he’d sensed the slave blood in
her.’
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This last remark took Antoine by surprise and he threw her
a questioning glance. But Jenny would not meet his gaze. The
luncheon bell had just begun to ring; she rose from her chair.
They walked together to the door. Jenny seemed to have
something still to say ; she placed her hand on the knob then
withdrew it.
‘This talk has done me ever so much good/ she said in a
low tone. ‘I’ve had nobody to talk to about Jacques since I got
back from Switzerland.’
‘What about Gise?’ Antoine remembered the regrets Gise
had expressed on this very subject when unburdening her heart
to him.
Jenny was leaning against the door-jamb, with lowered eyes ;
she seemed not to have heard.
After some moments she repeated; ‘What about Gise?’ as
if the words had only just sunk in.
‘Gise is the only person who could understand you. She loved
Jacques. And she, too, is suffering — terribly.’
Without looking up, Jenny shook her head. It seemed as if
she was determined to withhold any explanation. Then, raising
her eyes on Antoine, she said with a harshness that took him
by surprise :
‘Gise? She has her rosary. It keeps her fingers busy and it
helps her not to think.’ She lowered her eyes again and, after
a short pause, remarked : ‘Sometimes I envy her !’ But her tone
and a sound in her throat like a suppressed laugh belied the
words. She sefemed, indeed, to repent of them at once. In a
gentler voice and with obvious sincerity she added : ‘ 1 ’ve come
to regard Gise as a true friend. Whenever I think about our
future, she has a big share in it. And it’s a sort of consolation
to me to think that doubtless we shall always have her with us.’
Antoine waited for a ‘But — ’ It came, though after a
moment’s hesitation.
‘But Gise is ... as she is, you know. One must take people
as they are. Gise has splendid qualities; she has her faihngs,
too.’ Again she hesitated. ‘For instance, Gise isn’t quite straight-
forward.’
Antoine’s immediate reaction was a protesting exclamation.
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SUMMER, 1914
‘Gise not straightforward — with her candid eyes !’ But on second
thoughts he fancied he had guessed what Jenny meant. Without
being actually insincere, Gise tended to be secretive. She avoided
stating her likes and dislikes, shirked explanations, "had a knack
of hiding her antipathies and treating those she cared for least
with smiling friendliness. Was it due to shyness, or modesty,
or cunning? he wondered. Or was it not, more probably, the
instinctive double-dealing of those black races some drops of
whose ‘slave blood’ flowed in her veins : the self-defensive reflex
of peoples long inured to servitude? He took himself up at once.
‘Yes, I see what you mean.’
‘Then you see why, fond of her though I am, and intimate
as we are in our daily lives — well, there are some subjects I
can’t talk to her about.’ She drew herself up. ‘No, it’s out of
the question.’
Then quickly, as if to cut short the conversation, she opened
the door.
‘Let’s go down to lunch.’
9
A Second Talk with Jenny
Lunch was served in the open air under the kitchen porch.
It was a rapid meal. Jenny had little appetite and Antoine,
who had not had time for his treatment that morning, found
difficulty in swallowing. Only Daniel did justice to Clotilde’s
excellent veal cutlets and green peas. But he seemed bored and
listless, and made no effort to talk. Only at the end of the meal
did he come out of his shell. Antoine had just indulged in some
comments on Rumelles and his ilk, the ‘Back Areas Brigade,’
and Daniel promptly launched forth into a truculent defence
of the profiteers, ‘the only men who took a common-sense view
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of the war.’ By way of illustration he cited the case of his former
employer, Ludwigson, ‘that inspired crook,’ and in a tone of
burlesque admiration described how he had dashed across to
London at the outbreak of the war and, rumour had it, multi-
plied his capital a dozen times by founding, in co-operation
with a group of City Magnates and British politicians, the
concern known as Allied Oilfields Ltd.
Antoine was gazing at Jenny, struck by the change that had
come over her appearance in the last four years. Later on, he
thought, she’ll be the very image of her mother. Maternity and
its obligations had filled out her hips and bosom, thickened
the lower portion of her neck. But the change, to Antoine’s
mind, was all to her advantage ; it had brought some relaxation
to the ‘protestant stiffness’ (as he inwardly described it) in her
general bearing, the poise of her head, the rather angular grace
of the delicately moulded features. The expression of her eyes,
however, had not changed ; they had still that faraway look —
of loneliness, serene courage and melancholy — which had so
greatly impressed Antoine on the first occasion when he saw
Jenny, then a mere child, at the time of his brother’s escapade
with Daniel. ‘And yet,’ he reflected, ‘she seems much more at
peace with herself now than in the past. ... I never could make
out why Jacques was so attracted by her. She used to be so
unapproachable, so “prickly,” what with her pride and shyness
and standoffishness. An iceberg ! Now, anyhow, she doesn’t give
one that impression of having to make a superhuman effort
to talk to one about herself. This morning, she seemed posi-
tively eager to unburden herself to me. Just perfect she was this
morning. Still, she’ll never have her mother’s charm and
graciousness of manner. No, there’ll always be something in
her attitude that seems to say: “I’d rather not be noticed. I
don’t care if people like me or not. I’m sufficient to myself”
Well, well, it takes all sorts to make a world. She’ll never be
my type. But, I must say, she has vastly improved. . . .’
It had been settled that, immediately after luncheon, Antoine
was to go with Jenny to the hospital and call on Mme. de
Fontanin.
While Daniel settled down again on his long chair, Jenny
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SUMMER, 1914
ran upstairs to get little Paul out of bed. Antoine seized this
opportunity of going to his room and taking a hasty inhalation,
for he foresaw a tiring day.
Jenny usually cycled to and from her work. Taking her
bicycle with her for the return journey, she set off on foot across
the Park with Antoine.
‘Daniel seems greatly changed,’ Antoine remarked as they
were entering the avenue. ‘Has he really given up working?’
‘Oh yes, completely.’
Her tone was one of reprobation. Several times in the course
of the morning and during lunch, Antoine had noticed indi-
cations that brother and sister were not on the best of terms.
This had surprised him, for he remembered how in the past
Daniel had been all attention for Jenny, the kindest of brothers.
And he wondered if, in this respect too, Daniel was not
growing remiss.
They walked in silence for some minutes. The young leafage
of the limes spread the avenue with soft green shadows dappled
with gleams of sunlight, and the windless air was close and
oppressive, as if rain were threatening, though the sky was
cloudless.
Antoine raised his head and sniffed.
‘Smell it?’ he asked.
The air was laden with the fragrance of a clump of lilacs in
a garden by which they were passing.
But Jenny paid no heed to the lilacs.
‘He might make himself quite useful at the hospital, if he
chose to. Mamma is always asking him to help. But he says
that, with his wooden leg, he’s not up to work of any kind.’ She
changed hands on the handle-bars, so as to come nearer
Antoine. ‘The truth is, he’s never felt like doing much for others.
And less than ever now.’
He thought : She’s unfair to her brother. Anyhow she should
be grateful to him for looking after the child.
There was a pause. Suddenly she declared in an almost
strident voice :
‘Daniel has never had any sense of his duties to society.’
The remark took Antoine by surprise. Then he thought with
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annoyance : She refers everything back to Jacques. And it’s by
Jacques’ standards she’s judging her brother now.
‘Personally,’ he said in a low, sad voice, ‘I think a man’s to be
pitied when he feels that he is only a shadow of his former self.’
But she had only Daniel in mind.
‘He might quite easily have been killed !’ she exclaimed cal-
lously. ‘What’s he got to complain about? He came through
it with his skin !’ With unthinking cruelty she added : ‘Why
does he make all that fuss about his leg? What’s a slight limp?
Anyhow it wouldn’t prevent him from helping Mother with
her accounts at the hospital. Or, supposing he has no desire
to be of service to the community . . .’ (That’s another expres-
sion she’s picked up from Jacques, Antoine thought to himself.)
‘. . . what’s to prevent him starting painting again? No, the
truth is there’s something else ; it isn’t just a matter of health
with him, it’s something in his character.’ In her excitement
she had been gradually forcing the pace, and Antoine was
getting out of breath. Noticing this, she slowed down at once.
‘Life had always been too easy for Daniel, I’m afraid. He’d
always had everything his own way. And what makes him so
depressed these days is wounded vanity — nothing more. He
never stirs outside the garden, never goes to Paris. Why?
Because he’s ashamed of being seen in his present condition.
He can’t reconcile himself to the idea that his day is over, that
he can no longer lead the life of a “young man about town” —
the weak and filthy life he was leading before the war.’
‘You’re terribly severe, Jenny!’
She threw a quick glance at Antoine. He was smiling. She
waited for the smile to die away before speaking again.
‘You see. I’m afraid — for my son.’ There was a vicious edge
to her voice.
‘For Paul?’
‘Yes. Jacques made me understand . . . oh, heaps of things I
And now I feel half stifled in my present surroundings ; I’m not
at home here any more. And I can’t bear the idea that little
Paul will have to grow up in this tainted atmosphere.’
Antoine made a vague gesture as if he had not quite under-
stood.
903
SUMMER, 1914
‘I’m telling you all this,’ she said, ‘because I trust you.
Because I shall need your advice later on. I’ve a very deep
affection for Mamma. I respect her courage and her fine atti-
tude to life. Nor can I forget all she has done for me. But —
there’s no help for it; we haven’t a single idea in common.
I admit I’m very different from what I was in 1914. But
Mamma, too, has changed tremendously. As you know, she’s
been in charge of her hospital for the last four years. For those
four years she has been organizing, making decisions, giving
orders right and left, and she’s got used to being obeyed, looked
up to. She’s come to like authority. She — well, she’s become
quite different, I assure you.’
Antoine’s expression betrayed a certain incredulity.
‘Mamma used to be so easygoing,’ Jenny went on. ‘Of course
she was always very religious, but she never tried to force her
views on anybody. But nowadays — well, if you could hear her
lecturing her patients! And it’s always the men who play up
to her most who get the longest sick leave.’
‘You’re terribly severe,’ Antoine said again. ‘And I suspect,
unjust.’
‘Perhaps ! Yes, I dare say you’re right. I suppose I oughtn’t
to be telling you all this. I wonder how I can make you under-
stand what I mean. Here’s an example. Mamma always says
“our brave lads” and “the Huns.” ’
‘So does everyone.’
‘No, not in quite that way. All the crimes that have been
committed during the last years in the name of patriotism —
Mamma condones them. She actually approves of them. She’s
convinced that justice and decency are exclusively on the
Allies’ side. That the war must go on till Germany is crushed
out of existence. And that those who don’t think as she does
are traitors to their country. And that those who ascribe the
war to its true causes, and see that capitalism’s at the root of
everything that’s happened are . . .’
He listened in amazement. These revelations of Jenny’s
present state of mind, her outlook on life, and the new scale
of values she had taken over wholesale from Jacques, interested
Antoine far more deeply than the changes which had come
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over Mme. de Fontanin’s character. He felt inclined to say,
in his turn : ‘I’m afraid — for little Paul !’ For, though convinced
that Jenny’s ‘conversion’ to these views was mainly on the
surface and factitious, he could not help anxiously wondering
if it might not expose his little nephew to a dangerous atmo-
sphere; more dangerous, in any case, for the formation of a
growing mind than the example of ‘Uncle Dan’s’ laziness or
the grandmother’s narrow patriotism.
They were entering an open space where several roads met ;
beyond a stretch of sunlight the entrance-gates of the Thibaults’
country house were coming into view. His attention wandered
from his companion to the scene before him; he had the
impression of revisiting a place known to him in an infinitely
far-off past, a previous existence.
Yet everything had remained immutably the same : the broad
vista of the avenue, flanked by grassy riding-tracks and abutting
on the stately frontage of the Chateau ; the little square, ringed
with white railings, the round pool in its midst, the fountain
that played on Sundays only, the trim box-bordered lawns.
And in the distance he discerned, half hidden by the low
branches of the trees in his father’s garden, the tradesmen’s
entrance where Gise, as a little girl, had used to stand, watching
for him to come home. Here anyhow, it seemed, the war had
left no mark.
Before crossing the square Jenny halted.
‘For three years Mamma has been living in daily contact
with the beastliness of war. And one would think she’d lost the
capacity for pity ; that all her decent feelings have been blunted
by the degrading occupation she has taken up.’
‘By hospital work, you mean?’
‘No.’ Her voice was stern. ‘By the occupation which consists
in nursing young men back to health with the sole object of
enabling them to return to duty and be killed. Like the wretched
horses used by the picadors in bull-fights that are sewn up and
sent back again and again into the bull-ring.’ She stared at the
ground ; then suddenly, in a belated access of shyness, asked :
‘Do I shock you?’
‘No!’
905 GG*
SUMMER, 1914
Antoine was himself taken aback by the promptness of this
*No !’ ; it was a discovery to him to realize that he was far more
in sympathy with the outspoken indignation of a girl like Jenny
than with the patriotism of a Mme. de Fontanin. And, thinking
of his brother, he told himself yet once again, ‘How much better
I could appreciate him now than in the past !’
They had reached the gate.
Jenny sighed, regretful that their walk was over, and turned
to him with an affectionate smile.
‘Thank you. It’s so nice, for once in the way, to be able to
speak one’s heart out.’
10
Mme. de FontanirCs War Hospital
The massive iron gates stood open. The gilding of their showy
monogram ‘O.T.’ was hardly tarnished at all, but the drive was
in a sorry state. The wheels of ambulance- vans had scored deep
ruts, and not a trace was left of the fine gravel that M. Thibault
used to have raked and rolled out daily when he was in resi-
dence. Most of the windows, too, stood open, shaded by brand-
new red-striped awnings that made a brave display of colour
behind the leafage.
They came to the old stables.
‘It’s here,’ Jenny said, ‘the linen-store where I “do my bit”
as Mamma would say. I’ll have to leave you now. Her office
is the first door on the right, after crossing the verandah.’
Left to himself, he paused for some moments to take breath.
And as his gaze lingered on the scene before him, each shrub,
each winding garden-path lit up a facet of the past. By fits and
starts there came to him the tinkle of a piano, and a picture
formed before his eyes of Gise, perched on a high stool, her
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EPILOGUE
pigtail dangling, practising scales under the dual control of
old Mademoiselle and a loudly ticking metronome.
Beyond the shrubbery, in front of the house, was an animated
scene ; a number of young men in grey flannels and forage caps
were seated in tiers on the front steps, basking in the sun and
chattering to each other; others, seated round garden tables,
were playing cards or reading the papers. Two privates, coat-
less, in blue breeches and puttees, were mowing the lawn;
Antoine recognized as a bugbear of his youth the nerve-racking
din of his father’s old mowing-machine. Further off half a dozen
convalescents had installed the old quoits set under the beech-
tree; the air rang with the jingle of quoits hitting the metal
‘hob.’
The men sprawling on the steps rose to their feet and saluted
as Antoine approached and made his way between them. The
verandah had been enclosed with windows on all sides, to form
a sun-trap, and the air was warm and stuffy as in a hot-house.
It was used as a recreation-room by patients who were not yet
fit enough to venture out of doors. On the left was the piano —
the self-same yellowish-brown piano that Gise had learned on
as a child. A soldier was seated at it, picking out with an un-
prenticed finger the tune of ‘La Madelon.’
The piano fell silent, hands rose to foreheads to salute the
passing officer. Antoine entered what had been the drawing-
room ; it was empty at this hour, and had the look of an hotel
lounge, with four card-tables well in view and chairs of all
shapes and sizes grouped round them.
The door of M. Thibault’s study was closed. A card affixed
to it with drawing-pins bore the inscription: Staff. There
seemed at first sight to be nobody in the room. The furniture
had not been changed ; the big oak table, arm-chair and book-
cases lorded it in the old familiar places. The far end, however,
of the study had been screened off. At the sound of the opening
door a typewriter stopped clicking and a youngster’s head
peeped over the screen. No sooner had he set eyes on the visitor,
than he gave a joyful exclamation.
‘Oh, sir ! It’s nice to see you, sir !’
Antoine smiled uncertainly; he could make nothing of this
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SUMMER, 1914
greeting. Then he decided that this tall young man, whose face
seemed totally unfamiliar, must be ‘Eddie,’ the younger of the
two orphan boys who used to live together in the Rue de
Verneuil; the child on whom he had operated years ago for
an abscess of the arm. When leaving Paris at the beginning
of the war he had asked Clotilde and Adrienne to keep an eye
on the youngsters, and he had a vague impression of having
been told that Mme. de Fontanin had taken them on her staff
at the hospital.
‘By Jove, you have shot up !’ he exclaimed. ‘How old exactly
are you now?’
‘Just turned seventeen, sir.’
‘And what’s your job here?’
‘I started off as post orderly. Now I’m typist.’
‘Where’s your brother?’
‘On the Champagne front, sir. He was wounded last April —
didn’t you know about it? In the hand. Near Fismes, it hap-
pened. He’d joined up in 1916. They had to take off those two
fingers. Lucky it’s the left hand, isn’t it?’
‘And he’s gone back to the front? How’s that?’
‘Oh, there ain’t no flies on Robbie ! He got himself posted
to the Weather Bureau. He’s having a cushy time now — no
risks and easy work.’ Eddie gazed at Antoine with pitying
curiosity. ‘You were gassed, sir, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Noticing a small arm-chair, upholstered in red velvet and
garnished with gilt studs, that recalled to him his childhood,
he sank into it wearily.
‘Filthy stuff, gas!’ Eddie remarked, wrinkling his nose. ‘It
didn’t ought to be allowed, it’s like hitting below the belt. I
can’t think . . .’
‘Isn’t Madame de Fontanin here to-day?’ Antoine cut in.
‘She’s upstairs. I’ll let her know you’ve come, sir. We’re
expecting a new batch to-day, and extra beds are being fixed
up.’
Antoine sat on alone . . . alone with his father. For the strong
personality of M. Thibault seemed still to dominate the room.
It emanated from everything, from the very place allotted to
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EPILOGUE
each object as easiest of access; from the silver- topped inkpot,
from the desk-lamp, the hand-blotter, the penwiper and the
barometer hanging on the wall. So tenacious was that per-
sonality that the shifting of an article of furniture to a new place
or the addition of a screen could not dispel an atom of it. It
remained firmly rooted in this room, where for half a century
it had wielded uncontested sway. Antoine had only to glance
at that tall door in imitation oak to hear in his mind’s ear the
creak it used to make opening and closing — a curiously unfor-
gettable sound like a subdued grunt, malevolent and derisive.
He had only to look at the worn strip on the carpet to see
at once his father stumping to and fro between the bookcase
and the fireplace, his coat-tails flapping, his big, puffy hands
locked behind him on his buttocks. And it was enough to gaze
for a moment at the copy of Bonnat’s Christ hung on the wall
and, beneath it, the big desk-chair with his father’s initials
stamped on its leather back — in a flash he had resuscitated
M. Thibault’s burly form solidly ensconced in it, his shoulders
hunched forward. He seemed to see his father perking up his
small, pointed beard towards some unwanted caller; then,
before speaking, taking off his pince-nez and, with measured
movements that brought to mind a man crossing himself,
lowering his arm and bestowing the glasses in a waistcoat-
pocket.
The click of the door-latch brought him to his feet. Mme.
de Fontanin had come.
She was in the same uniform as her assistants, except that
her hair, which had gone quite white, was uncovered. Her
cheeks were pale and wasted. A thought came, unbidden, to
Antoine’s mind. ‘That’s a “heart-disease” complexion; I don’t
give her long to live.’
She clasped both Antoine’s hands and had him sit down;
then settled into the big initialled chair at the far end of the
table. Obviously, Antoine judged, this was ‘the Huguenot’s’
usual place. (‘If the old Master could come back . . . !’ as
Clotilde would say !)
She led off the conversation with an enquiry about his health.
The short wait had rested him, and he smiled.
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SUMMER, 1914
‘If I’d been “for it,” all would have been over months ago.
I’m pulling through. Luckily I’ve a sound constitution.’
He went on to ask about the hospital ; how she was faring in
her new life. She grew animated at once.
‘It’s been a great success — but the credit isn’t due to me.
I’ve such a splendid staff. Nicole is in charge. She’s a fully
certified nurse, you know, and the dear girl has been such a
wonderful help. Yes ; 1 couldn’t wish for better helpers. They’re
girls and young married women living here at Maisons, so
all my rooms are free for patients. And, as they’re voluntary
helpers, I can keep within my budget, though the Government
allowance is wretchedly small. But everybody’s been so gene-
rous, from the very first day. The local people are kindness
itself. Just think ! All the beds and bedding, crockery and linen
are supplied by residents at Maisons. To-day, for instance, we’re
expecting a new batch of patients. Well, Gise and Nicole have
just gone out to collect the extra bedding, and I’m certain they’ll
have no difficulty in getting all we need.’ Her upward gaze,
her radiant smile, aglow with trust and gratitude, seemed ren-
dering thanks to the All Highest for having peopled the world,
and in particular Maisons-Laffitte, with helpful souls and hearts
of gold.
She described in detail the changes which had been made
in the house and those she had in mind for the future. The idea
that the war might end some day, and with it her career as
Matron of a hospital, did not seem to cross her mind. Cheer-
fully she bade him ;
‘Come and see !’
All indeed was changed. The billiard-room had become a
first-aid room; the kitchen a consulting-room; the bathroom
a surgical dressing-room. The greenhouse had been fitted with
heating and converted into a ward with ample space for the
twelve beds installed in it.
‘Let’s go upstairs now.’
Each of the bedrooms, empty at this hour, served as a
miniature sick-ward. Fifteen patients were housed on the first
floor, ten on the second, and there were half a dozen emergency
beds available in the attics.
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EPILOGUE
Antoine was seized by a desire to have a look at his old
bedroom, but the door was locked. It was due to be visited
by the disinfecting staff; the room had been occupied by a
paratyphoid case, and the man had just been transferred to
the Saint-Germain hospital.
Mme. de Fontanin went from room to room, flinging doors
open with the air of one in high authority, casting a keen,
inspectorial glance at everything, checking, as she passed, the
temperature of the radiators, the cleanliness of the basins, even
the titles of the books and magazines lying on the tables. Now
and then she raised her arm and read the time on her wrist-
watch ; this gesture had evidently become an unconscious habit
of hers.
Antoine followed, a little out of breath with all this walking;
Clotilde’s exclamation was still echoing in his mind : ‘If the
old Master could come back . . . !’
They were on the second floor. As Mme. de Fontanin was
showing him into a large room with a gay, flowered wall-
paper and a window opening on the high branches of two
chestnut-trees, a rush of memories swept over him, and he
halted on the threshold.
‘Jacques’ bedroom!’
Suddenly his eyes filled with tears. Mme. de Fontanin stared
at him in surprise, then tactfully walked over to the window
and shut it. It seemed that this unlooked-for incursion of the
past had given her the desire for a more intimate conversation
with him.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’ll take you to the stables — that’s where
I’ve installed my G.H.Q,. — and we can have a quiet talk.’
They went down the stairs in silence. To avoid having to
walk across the verandah, they entered the garden by the back
door. In the shade four men were putting a coat of white paint
on some iron bedsteads. Mme. de Fontanin went up to them.
‘Hurry up, boys ! That paint has got to be dry by to-morrow
morning. . . . What are you up to, Roblet? Come down at
once!’ Mounted on the scullery roof a man was fastening to
the wall the branches of a clematis. ‘The day before yesterday
you were in bed and to-day you’re climbing ladders ! I never
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SUMMER, 1914
heard of such a thing!’ The culprit, a young bearded man,
belonging, Antoine guessed, to a territorial regiment, grinned
sheepishly but complied at once. As soon as he was on the
ground she went up to him, undid two buttons of his tunic and
felt his ribs. ‘Just as I expected. Your bandage has come loose.
Go to the infirmary and have it seen to.’ She called Antoine
to witness. ‘Just think! A lad who had an operation less than
three weeks ago !’
As they walked round the lawn on their way to the stables,
the men they passed gave friendly glances to Mme. de Fontanin
and raised their forage-caps civilian-wise.
‘My room’s upstairs,’ she said as she opened the door.
The ground-floor, where the stabling had been, was occupied
by carpenters’ benches, and the floor was strewn with shavings.
‘The boys call this their workshop,’ she explained as she led
the way up the narrow corkscrew staircase leading to what had
been the coachman’s quarters. ‘I never have to send out to get
jobs done nowadays. The boys do all my repairs — plumbing,
carpentry, electric fittings and so on.’
There were two rooms in the upper storey, one of which she
had converted into a little private office. Into this she now
showed Antoine. The furniture consisted of two garden chairs
and a table, stacked with files and ledgers. A threadbare mat
lay on the tiled floor. The moment he entered, Antoine recog-
nized the lamp standing on the table ; it was his lamp — the old
pot-bellied oil-lamp with a green cardboard shade under which,
on so many a hot summer night loud with the hum of moths,
he had read himself tired, working for examinations.
On one of the newly whitewashed walls was pinned a group
of photographs : a portrait of Jerome as a young man, willowy
and elegant, resting a languid arm on the back of an arm-chair ;
one of Daniel as a small boy in an English sailor-suit ; a snap-
shot of Jenny with her hair flowing over her shoulders, a tame
pigeon perched on her outstretched wrist; and another of
her, much more recent, in mourning, with her baby on her
knees.
A fit of coughing compelled Antoine to sit down brusquely
without waiting to be asked. When he looked up he saw Mme.
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EPILOGUE
de Fontanin gazing earnestly at him, but she made no comment
on his health.
‘I’ll take this chance of getting on a bit with my mending,
if you don’t mind.’ There was a hint of coquetry in the laugh
accompanying the remark. ‘I’ve hardly ever time these days
to do a stitch.’ She pushed aside a black Bible lying on the
table to make place for her work-basket. After another glance
at her wrist- watch she sat down.
‘Has Daniel talked to you about himself at all? Did he let
you have a look at his leg? I suppose not.’ She stifled a sigh.
Daniel had never let her see his mutilated limb.
‘No. But he’s told me all his troubles. I advised him to try
a course of graduated exercises. They can do wonders if one
has a little perseverance. Anyhow, he admits himself that he
can walk with hardly any difficulty now that he has this new
artificial limb.’
She did not seem to have heard. Her hands resting on her
lap, her face turned to the window, she was gazing pensively
at the sunlit foliage of the garden.
Suddenly she swung round.
‘Has he told you what happened here on the day that he
was wounded?’
‘No. What was it?’
‘God in His mercy forewarned me,’ she said gravely. ‘At the
very instant when Daniel was wounded I had a message from
Above.’ Her hand rose slowly and she paused, thrilled by the
memory of that strange experience. When she continued speak-
ing, it was with a certain solemnity, despite the studied sim-
plicity of her tone — the voice she would have used when quoting
a passage from the Scriptures ; evidently she saw it as a sacred
duty to make known to all the miracle that had befallen her.
‘It was a Thursday. I woke up suddenly at daybreak. I felt
God’s presence near, and I tried to pray. But a sudden fit of
faintness came over me ; it was the first time since the hospital
started that I’d been ill, and I haven’t had a moment’s illness
since. I tried to open my window to call one of the night nurses.
But I couldn’t keep on my feet. Luckily, as I didn’t put in an
appearance at the usual hour, one of the nurses came to see
9^3
SUMMER, 1914
what was the matter. She found me in bed, incapable of moving.
Whenever I tried to rise, I went quite dizzy and sank back on
to the pillow. I felt as if all my blood had flowed away through
a wound and Fd no strength left. And all the time Daniel was
in my thoughts. I prayed to God. But I got worse and worse
as the morning went on. Jenny brought the doctor to visit me
several times. They gave me ether. I could hardly speak. At
last, at half-past eleven, just after the first luncheon bell had
rung, I gave a sudden, involuntary cry, and fainted. I came
back to consciousness almost at once, and felt better. So much
so that at the end of the afternoon I was strong enough to get
up and go down to the office, sign the sick-lists and attend to
the mail. ... I was all right again.’
She had spoken in a level, somewhat restrained tone. She
made a short pause before continuing.
‘Well, Antoine, it was that Thursday at daybreak that
Daniel’s regiment got the order to attack. All the morning my
dear boy fought like a hero without being wounded once. But
a few minutes after half-past eleven a shell-splinter struck his
thigh and shattered it. He was carried to the regimental aid-
post, and from there an ambulance took him to the field hospital
where his leg was amputated some hours later. His life was
saved.’ She slowly nodded several times, looking at him fixedly.
‘Needless to say, I knew nothing of all that till ten days later.’
Antoine said nothing. What indeed could he have said? Her
experience, it struck him, was of the same order as the appa-
rently miraculous cure effected by Pastor Gregory when Jenny
in early youth was dying, as it seemed, of meningitis. And he
recalled one of Dr. Philip’s remarks. ‘People always have the
experiences they deserve.’
Mme. de Fontanin had picked up her needlework and was
silent for some moments. But before beginning to sew she pointed
with the spectacles she had just taken from their case to the
photograph of Jenny and her baby son.
‘You haven’t told me yet what’s your impression of our little
one.’
‘A splendid little chap !’
‘Isn’t he !’ she exclaimed proudly. ‘Daniel brings him here
914
EPILOGUE
occasionally, on Sundays. And each time I see him he seems
more developed, more robust. Daniel’s always complaining
about his disobedience and wilfulness. But need we be surprised
if the child has a mind of his own? That’s how a growing boy
should be — strong-willed, bubbling over with energy. You, I’m
sure,’ she added with a twinkle in her eye, ‘won’t say No to
that ! It’s a trial for me, seeing him so seldom. But, of course,
he needs me less than my patients do. . . .’ And like a stream
that after a brief deflection resumes its natural course, she went
on talking about her hospital.
He nodded approval now and then, but, fearing to bring on
his cough, refrained from speech. With her spectacles she looked
an old woman. And again it struck him: ‘That’s a “heart-
disease” complexion.’ Sitting very straight in her chair, plying
her needle without haste, she cut a queenly figure, but with
a redeeming touch of homeliness, as she expounded to him
the administrative methods she had introduced, and the
thousand and one responsibilities devolving on her.
‘It’s an ill wind . . .,’ Antoine mused. ‘This war has proved
a godsend to women of her type : an opportunity for public
service, for making themselves useful, and at the same time
giving a run to their domineering instincts, in an atmosphere
of gratitude and admiration.’
And he almost fancied she had guessed his thoughts when
she remarked :
‘Oh, I’m not complaining of my task. It’s terribly exacting,
but I couldn’t live without it now. I can’t imagine myself going
back to the life I led before the war. No, I can’t be happy
nowadays unless I feel that I’m being useful.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve
an idea! Later on, you must start a private nursing-home for
your patients — and put me in charge of it as Matron.’ At once
she added : ‘With Nicole and Gis^e on the staff, of course. And
perhaps Jenny too. . . . Why not?’
Complaisantly he echoed :
‘Why not indeed?’
There was a short pause before she spoke again.
‘Yes, Jenny, too, will need an occupation in life.’ She sighed;
then, without trying to convey the association of ideas behind
915
SUMMER, 1914
the words, went on : ‘Poor Jacques ! I’ll never forget that last
time I saw him.’
Again she fell silent. Her return journey from Vienna just
after mobilization had begun had come back to her mind. But
she had a happy knack of promptly effacing disagreeable
memories. Raising her hand, she pushed back a wisp of snow-
white hair that had fallen across her forehead. However, she
was determined to discuss with Antoine certain matters she
had at heart.
‘We must trust in the wisdom of Divine Providence,’ she
began, in that amiably authoritative tone of hers which implied
that she was not to be interrupted. ‘We must accept the events
that God has surely willed. Your brother’s death was one of
those events.’ She meditated for a while before pronouncing
judgement. ‘Yes, inevitably their love would have brought them
— both of them alike — nothing but unhappiness. ... You must
forgive me for talking like this.’
‘I entirely agree with you,’ Antoine put in promptly. ‘If
Jacques had lived, their life together would have been . . .
impossible !’
She cast him an approving glance, nodded slowly several
times, and resumed her sewing. After another pause, she spoke
again in the same tone.
‘I won’t conceal from you, Antoine, that I was terribly dis-
tressed by . . . all that. And the day I learned my Jenny was
going to have a baby . . .’ She paused.
He had often thought of her in that connexion. And, noticing
her eyes intent on him, he indicated by a slight flutter of the
eyelids how fully he understood her feelings.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed at once, fearing he might have failed to
take her meaning, ‘it wasn’t because of the . . . the irregularity
of her motherhood. No, not so much on that account. What
horrified me most of all was the thought that this dreadful
affair was to leave an after-effect, a perpetual reminder, in our
lives. I can talk to you quite frankly, can’t I? I said to myself,
“There’s Jenny’s future ruined beyond redress. It’s a judge-
ment on us both. ... So be it !” Well, Antoine, I was wrong ;
I was lacking in faith. God moves in a mysterious way. His
916
EPILOGUE
purpose is hidden from us, and His mercy infinite. What I had
taken for a trial, a punishment, has proved, on the contrary,
a blessing from Above. A sign of pardon. A source of happiness.
And why, when all is said and done, should God have punished
us? Was it not known to Him, still better than to us, that evil
had played no part in their lapse, that the hearts of these two
young people had remained pure and chaste, even in the act
of sin.’
Antoine thought : That’s curious ! By rights all this should
get intensely on my nerves. But not a bit of it ! There’s some-
thing in her that compels respect. More than respect, affection.
Her goodness of heart, perhaps. . . . And of course it’s extremely
rare, goodness of heart, the real thing — the kind she has, that’s
natural.
‘Jenny has every reason to be thankful,’ Mme. de Fontanin
continued in her strong, musical voice, still plying her needle.
‘She now has in her heart a precious memory that will ennoble
her whole life, a memory of the world well lost, a marvellous
moment ; one which, moreover — and how rare that is ! — has
not been followed by any sordid disillusionment.’
Some people, Antoine mused, manage to build up for them-
selves, once for all, a satisfying theory of the Scheme of Things.
After which it’s all plain sailing. Yes, that’s just the metaphor ;
their lives are like a pleasant cruise in summer weather, with
a favouring wind behind them all the way . . . right up to the
last landfall.
‘And now she has before her the noblest of tasks: the up-
bringing of ’
Antoine interrupted her almost brusquely.
‘I found her much changed, quite a different person, in fact.
She has matured : No, that’s not the word. I mean, she’s . . .’
Mme. de Fontanin had placed her sewing on her knees, and
taken off her spectacles. Now she bent towards him.
‘I’m going to let you into a secret, Antoine ; it’s this. I believe
Jenny’s happy. Yes, happy as she’s never been before. As happy
as it’s possible for her to be, for Jenny wasn’t born to
happiness.. Even as a child, she was always moping, and no one
could do anything about it ; melancholy was ingrained in her.
917
SUMMER, 1914
Worse still, self-hatred; she could never manage to appreciate
herself, to love, in herself, one of God’s creatures. And, alas,
she was never reUgious-minded ; her soul has always been an
empty temple. And now — see how the Holy Spirit is always
working in us and about us ! Every sorrow has its recompense ;
every discord adds to the Universal Harmony. To-day grace
has come to her. To-day I know — my intuition tells me — that
the dear child has found, in her present lot of widowhood and
motherhood, the utmost she can get of human happiness, the
utmost tranquillity and well-being of which her nature is
capable. . .
‘Aunt !’ a voice cried from the garden.
Mme. de Fontanin rose from her chair.
‘Ah, there’s Nicole back.’
‘The mayor is here, aunt,’ the voice continued. ‘He wants
to talk to you.’
Mme. de Fontanin was already outside the door. Antoine
heard her calling cheerfully from the top of the stairs ;
‘Come up to my room, darling, and keep company to . . .
to somebody you know.’
The door opened. Nicole stopped short on the threshold and
stood staring at Antoine as if she were not sure of recognizing
him.
A sudden discouragement came over him; he said in a low
voice :
‘Yes, I’m looking a dreadful wreck. No wonder you can’t
recognize me !’
She blushed; then, mastering her embarrassment, began to
laugh.
‘Of course I recognize you. Only — I never dreamt of meeting
you here.’
They had not seen each other yet, as Nicole had not come
back to the hostel on the previous evening; preferring not to
leave the paratyphoid patient to the night-nurse, she had spent
the night at his bedside.
Unlike Antoine, Nicole seemed to have taken a new lease
of youth. A sleepless night had not impaired the natural fresh-
ness of her complexion or dulled the sheen of her grey-blue eyes.
918
EPILOGUE
He asked her about her husband, whom he had met twice
in the course of the war.
‘Just now he’s with his motor-ambulance unit on the Cham-
pagne front,’ As she spoke she was darting this way and that
her sparkling gaze, in which schoolgirl innocence and the
deliberately sensual appeal of experienced womanhood were
indistinguishably mingled. ‘He’s worked off his feet. But he still
finds time to write for the Medical Review. He’s sent me an
article to type this week. It’s about the technique of putting
on tourniquets, or something of the sort.’
A sunbeam, skimming the soft curve of a shoulder outlined
beneath the closely fitting blouse, flickered along the trailing
folds of her nurse’s veil each time she moved, lighting up the
golden down of a bare fore-arm and, when she smiled, flashing
white upon her teeth. Antoine suddenly thought: ‘She must
play the devil with the hearts of the young fellows sent here
from the front.’
‘1 was awfully sorry not to be able to get back to the hostel
last night,’ she said. ‘What sort of evening did you have? Was
Daniel in a good humour? Did you manage to get him out
of his shell a bit?’
‘Oh yes. . . . Why do you ask?’
‘He’s so grumpy, such an old grouser, nowadays.’
Antoine could not help protesting.
‘After all, poor fellow, he has good reasons for being like
that.’
‘But it’s bad for him. Something should be done to shake
him out of it. To make him take up his painting again.’ Her
tone was earnest, as if this were a problem of extreme impor-
tance to her and Antoine’s visit were the heaven-sent oppor-
tunity she had been waiting for to solve it. ‘The life he’s leading
here can’t be allowed to go on indefinitely. He’s mouldering
away, he’s becoming an utter waster !’
‘I see no signs of it,’ Antoine smiled.
‘But it’s true. Ask Jenny. He’s really quite impossible. Either
he goes up to his bedroom the moment we get back — is it ill-
humour or just unsociability? I haven’t an idea — or else he
stays with us, but never opens his mouth. When he comes into
919
SUMMER, 1914
a room the temperature seems to go down with a rush ! His
presence makes us all uncomfortable. I assure you, you’d be
doing him a great service if you could make him see it’s up
to him to start work again, go back to Paris, mix with people,
come back to real life.’
Antoine merely gave a non-committal nod and murmured
again :
‘Poor fellow !’
An instinctive suspicion kept him on his guard; though he
could not account for it, he had an impression that Nicole was
actuated by some secret motive which she was careful to conceal.
His intuition was not wholly at fault. Since a certain night
of the previous winter she had had her own ideas regarding
Daniel. That night, after Jenny and Gise had gone upstairs,
Nicole, who had some work she wanted to finish, had stayed
on late in the drawing-room, sitting opposite her cousin, in
front of the fire. Suddenly he had said : ‘Keep like that, Nico !
Don’t move !’ and, picking up a sheet of paper which happened
to be lying on the floor beside him, had begun to make a pencil
sketch of Nicole’s face in profile. She had fallen in willingly
enough with his whim. But, some moments later, a vague
presentiment had caused her to turn and throw a quick glance
at him. Daniel, who had stopped drawing, was devouring her
with his eyes, and their expression was revolting; a mingling
of sensual desire and baffled rage, of shame and something akin
to hatred. At once he had looked down, crumpled up the paper
and tossed it into the fire. Then, without a word, he had left
the room. ‘So that’s it,’ Nicole had murmured in consternation.
‘He’s still in love with me !’ For it was still fresh in her memory,
that far-off period of her youth when she was living with her
aunt in Paris, and Daniel, then hardly more than a boy, had
been so desperately infatuated with her, dogging her steps at
every turn, following her into every corner of the flat. She had
regarded this frantic, unavailing passion as definitely of the past ;
but, it seemed, their life together at the hostel had stirred to life
again the ashes of that bygone ardour. And that night all had
become plain to Nicole ; Daniel’s love for her explained every-
thing: his fits of sulkiness, his taciturnity and fretfulness, his
920
EPILOGUE
obstinate determination not to leave Maisons and to persist in
his present, hermit-like existence of idleness and continence —
so alien from his temperament and previous mode of life.
‘Let me tell you what I think,’ Nicole continued. She had
no idea of the suspicions her insistence roused in Antoine.
‘Daniel’s to be pitied; there I quite agree with you. But it’s
not his . . . his infirmity that’s at the root of the trouble. Women
have intuitions about these things, you know. No ; there’s some-
thing else, something more subtle preying on his mind.
Quite likely it’s a trouble of a sentimental order, a hopeless
passion.’
Suddenly she feared she had betrayed her secret and a faint
blush rose to her cheeks. But Antoine was not looking at her.
A picture had risen in his mind of Daniel sprawling in his chair
under the plane-trees, munching his chewing-gum, dull-eyed,
his hands folded behind his neck.
‘Who can say?’ he murmured innocently.
Reassured, she broke into a laugh.
‘Why, you know as well as I do the life that Daniel used
to lead at Paris, before the war. . . .’
She stopped speaking, listened. There was a sound of foot-
steps on the landing.
Mme. de Fontanin entered, a sheaf of papers in her hand.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to rush off again at once. So sorry!’
She held up the correspondence, letters and long official enve-
lopes, she had brought. ‘You’d never believe, all the daily
“returns” we have to send in to the authorities, in duplicate
or triplicate ! It’s appalling 1 My afternoon mail alone gives me
a couple of hours’ work each day.’
Antoine rose.
‘I’ll be off now.’
‘You must come again. Will you be staying long with us?’
‘Afraid not. I’m going back to-morrow.’
‘To-morrow? You can’t mean it!’ Nicole exclaimed.
‘I’m due back at Le Mousquier on Friday.’
The three walked down the rickety stairs together.
Mme. de Fontanin glanced at her wrist-watch.
‘Anyhow I’ll come with you as far as the gate.’
921
SUMMER, 1914
‘And I must leave you,’ Nicole said. ‘See you to-night.’
When Nicole was out of earshot, Mme.,de Fontanin, without
stopping, asked in an anxious voice :
‘Nicole talked to you about Daniel, didn’t she? . . . My poor
son! He is never far from my thoughts, and I pray for him
without ceasing. It’s a heavy cross that has been laid on his
young shoulders.’
‘At least you have the assurance that he will be spared to
you. And, in times like these, that’s no small consolation.’
Antoine could see that the remark was lost on her ; that was
not the angle from which she viewed such things. They took
some steps in silence ; then she said :
‘All day alone . . . alone with his infirmity. Alone with that
regret which he will share with no one, not even with me. Poor
boy I’
Antoine stopped short in the middle of the drive, and now
his look was frankly questioning.
‘One can enter so well into his feelings,’ Mmfe. de Fontanin
went on, in the same level tone of sorrowful composure, ‘when
one considers his temperament— so passionate and so high-
minded. Think what it means to him to feel so fit and full of
energy and to see his country invaded, in grave peril I And to
feel he can no longer do anything to help !’
‘Do you really think it’s that?’ Antoine blurted out. This
explanation of Daniel’s moodiness was so unlooked-for that he
was unable to conceal his scepticism.
She straightened herself up to her height; a self-confident
smile, with a hint of pride in it, settled on her lips.
‘There’s no mystery about what’s wrong with Daniel, and,
alas, no remedy for it. Daniel’s heart-broken at being no longer
fit to do his duty.’ And noticing that Antoine seemed still not
quite convinced, she added with a look at once ecstatic and
austere : ‘If you want a proof of what I’m saying, here it is. If
Daniel shrinks from coming to the hospital it’s not so much
that, as he professes, the walk here tires him. No, it’s because
he can’t bear to mix with these young fellows of his own age
who, like him, have been wounded but, unlike him, will very
soon be going back to do their duty at the front.’
922
EPILOGUE
Antoine made no reply. In silence they walked on. A few
yards from the entrance gate Mme. de Fontanin halted.
‘Only God knows when we shall see each other again.’ She
gazed at Antoine with emotion, and when he held out his hand
kept it pressed between her palms for a moment. ‘May all go
well with you, my friend.’
II
Little Paul
As Antoine walked across the stretch of open ground in front
of the gates, he was pondering on the ‘enigma’ which everyone
he had talked to seemed to find in Daniel. Each of those women,
he reflected, tried to convert me to her pet solution. And, likely
as not, there isn’t any ‘enigma’ at all !
Somewhat tired — but surprised and pleased to find he was
not more so — he made his way slowly towards the Fontanins’
house. It was a relief to be alone. The spacious avenue, flanked
by lime-trees, stretched before him up to the outskirts of the
forest. It was four o’clock, and already the declining sun was
tangled in the tree-trunks, strewing the grass with level shafts
of light. Now and again, remembering the dusty roads of the
Riviera, he sniffed luxuriously the keen and sparkling air,
rife with the vernal fragrance of the green, unspoilt country-
side engirdling Paris.
But there was a melancholy undertone to his content; his
visit to Maisons had evoked too many memories of the past.
And this glimpse of his old country home had conjured up a
host of phantoms that dogged his loitering steps. His youth;
his robust health of earlier years. His father; Jacques. During
the last twenty-four hours Jacques’ presence had been con-
stantly beside him. Never before had he felt so poignantly that
923
SUMMER, 1914
Jacques’ death had robbed him of one who could never be
replaced; an only brother. For the first time he realized to the
full the irretrievability of his loss. He went so far as to reproach
himself for the belatedness of his mood, this tardy access of
genuine despair. What had prevented him from feeling thus
before? The pressure of circumstances, perhaps ; the war. . , .
He clearly recalled the moment when a letter had come to
him from Rumelles, a letter that clinched the matter, extin-
guished the last spark of hope. It had been handed to him in
the ambulance car park at Verdun, only a few hours before
his division moved on to the Eparges sector. He had been busy
preparing for the move, and later on, in the confusion of settling
in, had not had time to give way to emotion. Nor, indeed,
in the following fortnight ; hurrying from one point to another
through mud and deluges of rain, struggling to carry on as
best he could in the ruined villages of the Woevre district,
worked off his feet, he had had no time to spare for personal
afflictions. Subsequently, during a quiet spell, he had read the
letter again, answered Rumelles, and gradually become inured
to his bereavement, without having ever given it much thought.
To-day, however, with everything around him bringing back
his home-life of the pre-war years, at last regret took concrete
form, the sense of loss struck home with an intensity he had
not known before. Even here, in the road leading to the forest,
every detail of the landscape was charged with memories of
Jacques. Those white hurdles, for instance — despite their dif-
ference in age he and Jacques had often vaulted them together,
in friendly contest ; side by side they had sprawled in that green
meadow, just before haymaking time ; one day they had amused
themselves dislodging with a pointed stick the nests of those
flat-backed insects which still swarmed on the mossy roots of
the limes, and which they had named ‘soldiers’ because of their
scarlet shells quaintly patterned with black chevrons. To-
gether, on afternoons like this, they had roamed beside those
hedges and palings, plucking as they passed sprigs of early lilac
or laburnum; often and often they had cycled along this very
road with a bathing-suit or racquet strapped to the handle-bars.
And, yonder, a gateway shadowed by acacias brought back to
924
EPILOGUE
him that year when, still a schoolboy, he had gone for private
lessons during the holidays to an old pedagogue who was spend-
ing the summer at Maisons. Often at nightfall Mademoiselle
and Jacques had come to meet him there, so that he should
not have to come home by himself across the park. And he
seemed to see his brother, then a three-year-old child, freeing
his hand from Mademoiselle’s, running to meet him, clinging
to his arm and prattling away about the small adventures of
his afternoon.
He was still following the same train of thought when he
reached the hostel. And when, as he pushed open the little gate
leading into the garden, he saw Paul let go Uncle Dan’s hand
and rush up to him, he seemed to see Jacques running towards
him — the same shock of reddish-brown hair, the same bold
decided movements. More deeply stirred than he cared to show,
he caught up the child in his arms, as he used to do with his
brother, and was about to give him a kiss. But Paul, who could
not bear any sort of restraint, even by way of an embrace,
struggled and kicked so violently that Antoine, laughing and
breathless, had to put him down again.
Daniel had watched the little scene, his hands in his pockets.
‘What strength the young ruffian has !’ Antoine exclaimed
with almost fatherly pride. ‘The way he wriggles ! It’s like
trying to hold an eel you’ve just pulled out of the water.’
Daniel smiled, and his smile betrayed a pride exactly similar
to Antoine’s. Then he pointed skywards.
‘Gorgeous day, isn’t it? . . . Another summer beginning.’
Slightly exhausted by his tussle with Paul, Antoine had seated
himself on the border of the path.
‘Going to stay here for a bit?’ Daniel enquired. ‘I’ve been
on my feet for quite a while, and my apology for a leg needs
a rest. Do you mind looking after the kid?’
‘Not a bit.’
Daniel turned to the child.
‘You’ll come in presently with Uncle Antoine. Are you going
to be good?”
Paul looked down without replying. He shot Antoine a quick
sidelong glance, then followed Daniel’s retreating form with
925
SUMMER, 1914
his eyes, evidently in half a mind to follow him. But just then
a cockchafer came blundering by and crashed upon its back.
Forgetting all about Uncle Dan, he squatted on the ground
and fell to watching the insect’s vain struggles to right itself.
Antoine decided that the best method of making the child
get used to him would be to seem to take no notice. He remem-
bered a way he used to have of amusing his brother, when
Jacques was the same age. Picking up a thick piece of pine-bark
from the ground beside him, he began to whittle it into the
shape of a boat.
Paul, who had been secretly observing him, very soon came
up.
‘Go’s knife?’ he asked.
‘Mine. Uncle Antoine’s a soldier, so he has to have a knife
to cut his bread and meat.’
The explanation was obviously of no interest to Paul.
‘What’s you doing?’
‘Can’t you see? I’m making a little boat — a little boat for
you. When your mummy baths you, you can put the boat into
the bath and, you’ll see, it’ll float on the water like a real ship.’
The child listened, his brows wrinkled with the strain of
mental concentration. In the frown there was a certain discom-
posure, too; his uncle’s weak, hoarse voice affected him un-
pleasantly.
And, strangely enough, he appeared to have understood
nothing of what Antoine had said. Could it be that he had
never seen a boat? . . . He gave a sigh, then seizing upon the
one point which had struck him by its glaring inaccuracy,
hastened to set it right.
‘Mummy don’t bath me. Uncle Dan baths me.’
Then he returned to his cockchafer, completely indifferent
to Antoine’s work of art.
Antoine accepted the rebuff, and, throwing away the boat,
put the knife down beside him.
After a moment Paul came back. Antoine made another
effort to catch his interest.
‘Have you done anything nice to-day? Have you been for
a walk in the garden with Uncle Dan?’
926
EPILOGUE
The child, after groping, it seemed, in the depths of his
memory', nodded.
‘Have you'been good?’
He nodded again, but almost immediately ran up to Antoine
and after a brief hesitation confided gravely :
‘Me not quite sure.’
Antoine could not help smiling.
‘What? You’re not sure whether you’ve been good or not?’
‘Yes ! Me been good !’ Paul cried indignantly. Then the same
odd doubt came over him again. He wrinkled up his nose
comically and, lingering on each word, repeated : ‘But me
not quite sure.’
He made as if to go away, but, as he was passing behind
Antoine, made a sudden grab at the knife, which was lying
on the ground. ‘No,’ Antoine remonstrated, covering the knife
with his hand. ‘Leave it alone !’
The child stood his ground, looking daggers at him.
‘Mustn’t play with that,’ Antoine said. ‘You’ll cut yourself.’
He shut the knife and put it in his pocket. Paul glared at him
in high dudgeon. Antoine tried to make peace, and smilingly
held out his hand. The blue eyes flashed; then, lifting the
outstretched hand towards his lips as if to kiss it, the child dug
his small sharp teeth into the little finger.
‘Owl’ Antoine gasped, so staggered by the outrage that it
did not even occur to him to be angry. ‘Paul is very naughty,’
he said, rubbing his finger where the small teeth had nipped
it. ‘Paul has hurt poor Uncle Antoine.’
The boy looked at him enquiringly.
‘Very much hurt?’ he asked.
‘Very much.’
‘Very much hurt,’ Paul repeated with obvious satisfaction.
Then, turning on his heel, scampered off across the terrace.
The child’s conduct puzzled Antoine. Was it simply a desire
for revenge? he wondered. Hardly that. What then? An action
like that may mean all sorts of things. It’s quite possible that
when he found he couldn’t disobey my orders not to touch
the knife, the realization of his own helplessness came over him
with a rush and carried him away. Perhaps when he bit my
927
SUMMER, 1914
finger like that it wasn’t so much to hurt or punish me. His
nerves may have been so strung up that he was bound to find
some relief for them — it was an irresistible physical impulse,
in fact. In any case, if we’re to judge a reaction of that sort,
we need first to be able to estimate exactly the forces actuating
it. The impulse to grab that knife may have been more impera-
tive than an adult could possibly suspect.
Remembering his duty to keep an eye on Paul he glanced
towards the terrace. Oblivious to the world, the little fellow was
trying to clamber up a mound of earth some ten yards away.
Jacques, Antoine told himself, would certainly have been
quite capable of an equally vindictive reaction. But would he
have gone so far as actually to bite me?
He appealed to his memories for better understanding. He
could not resist the temptation of identifying past and present,
father and son. The glance Paul had flung at him had revealed
the first stage of tendencies he knew only too well: spite,
defiance, a thirst for revolt, and pride — aloof, ungovernable
pride ; he had seen them all before, many a time, in his brother’s
eyes. It seemed so striking an analogy that he was impelled
to carry it still further ; so far as to persuade himself that behind
this child’s rebellious attitude lay hidden the same high qualities
as had been always latent beneath Jacques’ outbursts of revolt:
a rare integrity of purpose, extreme sensitiveness, and a wealth
of affection always misunderstood.
Fearing to catch cold, he was about to rise, when his atten-
tion was caught by the extraordinary gymnastic feats in which
the little fellow was indulging. The mound he was trying to
storm was something like six feet high ; the right and left sides
rising gently from the level were easy of ascent, but in the middle
the gradient was stiff — and it was precisely this face that the
child was set on scaling. Several times in succession Antoine
saw him take a run, scramble half way up the slope, lose footing
and roll back to the ground. He could not hurt himself very
much as the fall was broken by a carpet of pine-needles. He
appeared completely absorbed in the feat he had set himself;
apart from it the world did not exist for him. With every
attempt he came nearer the summit; the height from which
928
EPILOGUE
he tumbled was greater each time. After each fall he rubbed
his knees, and began again.
That’s the true Thibault spirit coming out, Antoine thought,
not without satisfaction. The spirit that made Father so tyran-
nical and domineering, Jacques so headstrong and rebellious,
and in my case took the form of dogged perseverance. This little
chap has obviously the same driving force within him. What
form, I wonder, will it take later on?
Once more the little boy charged up the mound and this
time so fiercely, so recklessly, that he all but reached his goal.
But then he lost foothold in the crumbling soil; he was on the
point of toppling over once again when he grasped a tuft of
grass, managed to keep his balance, and with a final effort
hoisted himself to the summit.
Antoine thought : I bet he’ll look round now to see if I’ve
been watching !
He was wrong. The boy kept his back turned, and took no
notice of his uncle. He stood for a moment, his small feet
squarely planted in the turf. Then, satisfied no doubt, he walked
composedly down one of the more gradual inclines, without
even casting a backward glance at the scene of his triumph.
Leaning against a tree, he took off one of his sandals, shook
out the pebbles and painstakingly put it on again. Then, know-
ing he could not button the strap himself, he went up to Antoine
and held out his foot without a word. Antoine smiled and did
the necessary, without comment. Then he said :
‘Now let’s go indoors, Paul.’
‘No.’
Antoine thought : He has a way that’s all his own of saying
No. Jenny’s right; it isn’t so much that he wants to get out of
doing the particular thing one asks of him, but he’s determined
to say No to everybody; he won’t give up an atom of his
independence for any reason whatsoever.
‘Now then, Paul,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘Be a good boy.
Uncle Dan’s waiting for us. Come along !’
‘No.’
Conscious that the management of unruly children was not
his forte, Antoine endeavoured to turn the difficulty.
929
HH
SUMMER, 1914
‘You show me the way. Which path do we go along? This
one, or that one?’ He tried to take the child’s hand. But Paul
put his hands resolutely behind his back.
‘Me say No !’
‘All right,’ Antoine replied. ‘So you want to stay there all
by yourself? Well, stay then.’ And with deliberate steps he
walked off towards the house, whose pink walls glowed across
the trees, lit up by the setting sun.
Before he had gone very far he heard Paul running up, full
tilt, behind him. He decided to say some friendly word when
the child caught him up, as if nothing had happened. But Paul
ran past him without stopping and, as he passed, flung out
insolently :
‘Me going in — ’cause me wants to !’
12
An Evening at the Hostel
D I N N E R at the hostel was as a rule a fairly cheerful function,
thanks to the flow of small-talk kept up by Gise and Nicole.
Glad to be through with their day’s work — and perhaps, too,
at feeling free from the control of Mme. de Fontanin, who with
all her motherliness was something of a martinet — they dis-
cussed in the frankest terms the happenings of the day, com-
pared notes regarding newcomers to the hospital, and with
schoolgirl zest exclaimed upon the trivial incidents of their
respective daily rounds.
Though feeling rather limp, Antoine was amused by the
assurance with which, in studiously technical terms, they dis-
cussed certain treatments and passed judgement on the com-
petence of the various doctors. On several occasions they
930
EPILOGUE
appealed to him for an expert opinion, which he furnished
smilingly.
Busy looking after her son who was having his dinner with
the grown-ups, Jenny paid little heed to what was said. Daniel,
though taciturn as usual vis-d-vis Nicole and his sister, now
and then addressed a remark to Antoine.
Nicole had brought an evening paper, in which there was
mention of the long-range bombardments of Paris. Several
buildings in the central districts had recently been hit; five
persons, including three women and a small baby, had been
killed. The baby’s death had provoked a unanimous denun-
ciation of German barbarity in the allied Press.
The fact that such atrocities were possible in modern times
revolted Nicole.
‘Those Huns !’ she cried. ‘They’re absolute brutes. Their
poison-gas and flame-throwers were bad enough. But this
slaughtering of mere civilians, innocent children — it’s simply
monstrous, it’s inconceivable ! They must have lost every spark
of decency, every human feeling, to behave like that.’
‘Does the slaughter of innocent civilians,’ Antoine suggested,
‘really strike you as much more inhuman, more immoral, more
monstrous, than the butchery of young soldiers at the front?’
Nicole and Gise stared at him, open-mouthed.
Daniel had laid down his fork, and was looking down in
silence at his plate.
‘Don’t forget this,’ Antoine continued. ‘Any attempt to im-
pose rules on war, to restrict it, organize it — “humanize” it,
as they say — to declare that this or that is “barbarous” or
“immoral,” implies that there’s another way of making war —
a gentlemanly way, a way that’s perfectly humane and moral.’
He paused and tried to catch Jenny’s eye. But she was holding
a mug to her son’s lips and seemed intent on her maternal
task.
‘What is it that’s so monstrous?’ he went on. ‘Is it really that
it’s more cruel to kill men in one way rather than another?
Or that certain people are the victims, rather than others?’
Jenny stopped feeding the child, and set down the mug so
violently that the milk splashed on the tablecloth.
931
SUMMER, 1914
‘What is monstrous,’ she said through her clenched teeth,
‘is the apathy of the masses. They have the numbers, they have
the last word. No war can be carried on against their will.
Why don’t they do something? They have only to say “No”
and the peace which they’re all eager for will follow instantly.'
Daniel’s eyebrows lifted and he shot a quick, enigmatic glance
at her.
There was a short silence. Then Antoine summed up in a
calm, confident tone.
‘What’s monstrous isn’t any particular form of war. The
monstrous thing is war itself.’’
Some minutes passed before anyone dared to resume the
conversation.
Antoine was pondering on Jenny’s last remark. Was it true
that the masses set such store by peace? Doubtless, he told
himself, they clamour for it, once a war is on. But no sooner
do they get it than their mutual intolerance and fighting in-
stincts come into play again, and peace is once more imperilled.
It’s true enough that the various governments and their inter-
national policies are responsible for wars. But we must not forget
that human nature has a large share in that responsibility. . . .
In fact, at the base of every form of pacifism lies a belief in the
ethical progress of mankind. I have that belief, or, rather. I’ve
an emotional need to feel it; I can’t bring myself to admit that
human nature isn’t perfectible ad infinitum. I need to believe
that one day man will contrive to bring order out of chaos and
institute upon this planet a reign of universal brotherhood.
But, to bring this about, it’s not enough that an enlightened
few should consecrate their efforts, and their lives, to this ideal.
No, centuries of evolution are needed ; thousands of years, per-
haps. What hope is there of anything really fine emerging from
twentieth-century man? And the trouble is that, try as I may,
I can’t discover in so remote a prospect anything to console
me for being obliged to live among the ravening beasts that
are the human race to-day. . . .
He noticed that the others were still silent. The atmosphere
at the dinner- table was still tense, charged with hostile currents.
Conscious of his responsibility for this state of things, and re-
932
EPILOGUE
gretting it, he tried to give the conversation a new direction,
and turned to Daniel.
‘By the way, have you heard anything of that eccentric friend
of yours, the Pastor? What’s he up to, these days?’
‘Pastor Gregory, you mean?’
The name was enough to bring a twinkle of amusement to
the eyes of all the young people at table.
In a mournful tone, contrasting quaintly with the smile that
hovered on her lips, Nicole said :
‘Aunt Therese is dreadfully worried about him. He’s been
in a sanatorium at Arcachon since last Easter.’
‘The last news we had,’ Daniel added, ‘was that he was
confined to his bed.’
Jenny put in a word, mentioning that the Pastor had been
at the front since the beginning of the war. Then the con-
versation flagged again. . . . To keep it up, Antoine enquired :
‘Did he join up?’
‘Well,’ Daniel said, ‘he tried his best to go on active service.
But his age and health made it impossible. So he joined an
American Ambulance Section. He spent the whole of that
terrible winter of 1917 on the British front. He had attack after
attack of bronchitis. Then he started spitting blood. But he
wouldn’t quit until they forced him to. Only — then it was too
late.’
‘The last time we saw him was in 1916,’ Jenny said. ‘He
was on leave and came to visit us here.’
‘He looked quite changed already,’ Nicole added. ‘An abso-
lute ghost. With a big Tolstoy beard. Like an old magician
in a fairy-tale.’
‘Did he still refuse to employ medicines?’ Antoine asked.
‘And insist on treating diseases with his mumbo-jumbo?’
Nicole burst out laughing.
‘He was crazier than ever ! You should have heard the things
he said to us when he was here. For two years he’d been con-
veying dying men in his ambulance, and he kept on calmly
telling us, “There is no death !” ’
‘Nicole!’ Gise exclaimed. It distressed her that the Pastor
should be held up to ridicule, especially before Antoine.
933
SUMMER, 1914
‘Of course,’ Nicole explained, ‘the word “death” rarely crosses
his lips. He calls it “the mortal illusion,” whatever that may
signify.’
‘And in his last letter to Mamma,’ Daniel smiled, ‘there was
a real gem. This is about what he wrote: “A/j' life will soon
depart on to the platie of the invisible” ’
Gise cast a reproachful look at Antoine.
‘Don’t laugh, Antoine. I know he looks absurd, but he’s a
really saintly man.’
‘I dare say you’re right, Gise,’ Antoine admitted. ‘He may
be a saint. But I can’t help thinking of all the poor wounded
Tommies who were unlucky enough to fall into his saintly
clutches. And nothing will convince me that as an ambulance-
man he wasn’t a public danger.’
They had finished dessert. Jenny helped Paul down from his
chair and rose. The others followed her example and walked
after her into the drawing-room. She did not stay, however,
but went upstairs at once to put the child to bed ; they had
sat at table longer than usual that evening.
While Gise, in a low chair some distance from the light,
settled down to knitting (she always presented her soldier-
patients with a pair of socks knitted by herself when, on re-
covery, they left the hospital to rejoin their regiments), Daniel
took a volume of Round the World from the piano on which it
was lying and went over to the sofa behind the big circular table
on which was placed the only light in the room, an oil lamp.
Watching the young man poring over his book with the
application of an industrious schoolboy, Antoine wondered if
he were really interested in its old-fashioned illustrations, or
whether this were not a habit Daniel had developed to keep
himself in countenance.
He went up to the fireplace, where Nicole kneeling on the
hearth-rug was kindling a fire.
‘It’s ages since 1 last saw a log fire,’ he remarked.
‘The nights are still a bit chilly. And anyhow it makes the
room more cheerful.’ She straightened up and turned to him.
‘Do you know, it was here, at Maisons, we met for the first
time. I can remember it ever so well. How about you?’
934
EPILOGUE
‘Yes, I remember it too.’
That far-off summer evening, how clearly it came back to
him, when, yielding to Jacques’ insistence, he had accompanied
him to the ‘Huguenots’ ’ house, despite their father’s veto ! He
recalled his surprise at meeting there his friend Felix Hequet,
a young surgeon some years his senior. Pictures formed before
his eyes of Jenny and Nicole walking side by side in the rose-
alley; of Jacques, then a student, fresh from his success in the
‘Normale’ examination ; and himself, a budding medical prac-
titioner whom Mme. de Fontanin was alone in addressing
punctiliously as ‘Doctor.’ Days remote indeed ! Then all of
them were young, rejoicing in their youth and prospects of
the future, without an inkling of what lay ahead — the cataclysm
the statesmen of Fmrope were preparing for them behind the
scenes, which was to sweep ruthlessly away all their petty per-
sonal ambitions, to cut short the careers of some and change
completely those of others, to pile ruin upon ruin, bereavement
on bereavement, throwing the whole world into chaos — for
how many years yet?
‘I’d just got engaged,’ she went on in a pensive voice, in
which there was an undertone of melancholy. ‘Felix had
brought me here in his car. We had a breakdown on the way
back, I remember, in the Sartrouville woods, and it was past
midnight when we got back to Paris.’
Daniel’s eyelids lifted and he shot a rapid glance, which
Antoine intercepted, in their direction. Was he listening? Did
this recall of happier days stir him with faint longings, with
regrets? Or was it merely, Antoine wondered, that their foolish
chatter got on his nerves? He fell to perusing his magazine
again. But, a few minutes later, stifling a yawn, he rose,’ closed
the book, walked stiffly up to them and said good-night.
Gise put down her knitting.
‘Going upstairs, Daniel?’
In the dim light her hair seemed woollier, her complexion
darker than ever, the whites of her eyes still more lustrous. The
glow from the burning logs made the bent form on the low
chair seem like an evocation of the African wild — a native
woman squatting beside her jungle camp-fire.
935
SUMMER, 1914
She rose.
‘1 think your lamp has been left in the kitchen. Come along,
I’ll light it for you.’
They went out of the room together. Antoine followed them
with his eyes. Then turning back to Nicole, noticed her gaze
intent on him. An odd little smile formed on her lips.
‘Daniel ought to marry her,’ she murmured.
‘What?’
‘1 mean it. Don’t you think it would be a perfect match?’
Antoine was so taken aback that he halted where he stood,
staring at her, his eyebrows lifted. Tossing her head back, she
burst into a peal of deep, full-throated laughter.
‘Sorry ! I’d no idea I was saying anything so outrageous !’
She drew a chair up to the fire and sank into it, crossing
one leg over the other. There was something deliberately allur-
ing in her languorous grace, as she looked him over in silence.
He sat down beside her.
‘Do you really think there’s anything between them?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she hastened to reply. ‘I’m pretty sure
that Daniel at any rate hasn’t dreamt of such a thing.’
‘Neither has Gise,’ he exclaimed impulsively.
‘No, probably Gise hasn’t, either. But you can see she’s in-
terested in him. She’s always the one who runs his errands, and
gets him his papers and packets of chewing-gum. And, what’s
more, it’s pretty plain that he likes it. I suppose you’ve noticed
that she’s the only one of us who hasn’t to bear the brunt of
his fits of bad temper.’
Antoine made no reply. His first reaction had been one of
repugnance for the suggestion Gise might marry ; he could not
wholly forget the past or the part that Gise had played in his
life for a little while. On second thoughts, however, he could
not see any objection that would hold water.
The corners of Nicole’s mouth were still dimpling with silent
laughter. But her gaiety seemed forced and overdone, some-
how ; so much so that Antoine wondered if by any chance she
were in love with her cousin.
‘Now really, doctor, you must admit it isn’t such a crazy
notion as all that,’ she persisted. ‘Gise could devote the rest
936
EPILOGUE
of her existence to him, and I can’t think of any way in which
a girl of her type has a better chance of making something of
her life. And as for Daniel . . Slowly she let her head sink
back till the coils of fair hair were pillowed on the cushions.
Between the moist, parted lips Antoine caught for a moment
the white gleam of her teeth. Then, lowering her eyelids, she
shot a quick, deliberately meaning glance at him. ‘You know,
Daniel’s the kind of man who likes being doted on.’
On the other side of the wall the old oak staircase creaked ;
she started, made a slight, almost imperceptible grimace, then,
with a deftness in deception that Antoine found almost per-
turbing, changed the subject. ‘That reminds me of the para-
typhoid case I was sitting up with last night. He was an oldish
man, in the forties; a Savoyard, I imagine.’ Here Jenny came
in, followed by Gise, and Nicole immediately speeded up her
flow of conversation. ‘Anyhow he raved all night in some queer
dialect — I couldn’t understand any of it, except one word.
Now and again he’d cry out “Mummy!” in a voice like a
baby’s. It was absolutely heart-rending.’
Antoine took up his cue with a promptness that gave him
an absurd feeling of pride.
‘Oh yes, I’ve heard that often enough myself. But actually
it’s not quite what it seems. I’m glad to say it’s no more than
a meaningless cry, a return of the subconscious mind to a child-
hood habit. I’ve heard a lot of dying men cry out “Mother I”
but I don’t believe many of them were really thinking of their
mothers.’
Jenny, who had brought in a bundle of brown wool to be
wound into balls, asked, ‘Who’s going to help me to-mght?’
‘I’m dreadfully sleepy, I confess,’ Nicole smiled lazily, glanc-
ing at the clock. ‘Why, it’s twenty to ten !’
Gise said : ‘I will.’
Jenny shook her head.
‘No, darling; you’re fagged out, too. Go and have a good
sleep.’
Nicole kissed Jenny, then turned to Antoine.
‘I hope you’ll excuse me. We have to be up and about at
seven in the morning, and I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’
937 hh*
SUMMER, 1914
Gise came up next. Her heart was aching with the thought
that Antoine was leaving to-morrow, that his visit was to end
without their having been alone together again; she yearned
to recapture the delightful intimacy of their talk in Paris. But
she dared not voice her regrets for fear of bursting into tears ;
without speaking, she offered her cheek for a kiss.
‘Good-bye, dear little Blackie.’ There was a deep tenderness
in his voice.
Promptly she was convinced that he had guessed her thoughts
and that he too felt the pang of parting ; and now that she was
sure of his sympathy the parting suddenly became more
bearable.
Avoiding his eyes, she followed Nicole out of the room. It
struck Antoine that she had not said good-night to Jenny; but
before he had time to wonder whether any misunderstanding
had arisen between them, Jenny hurried across the room and
laid a detaining hand on Gise’s shoulder just as she was going
out.
‘I’m not sure that Paul has enough bedclothes on him. Would
you mind putting something over his feet?’
‘The pink blanket?’
‘The white one’s warmer.’
Again, Antoine noted, Gise had omitted to say good-night
to Jenny on leaving her.
He had remained standing. ‘What about you, Jenny?’ he
asked. ‘Aren’t you going to bed? You mustn’t stay up for me,
you know.’
‘I’m not a bit sleepy,’ she assured him, settling herself in the
chair Nicole had Just left.
‘Well then, to work! Hand me over one of those hanks of
wool — I’m going to take Gise’s place.’
He helped himself to a skein and squatted in the low chair.
Jenny smiled and gave in.
‘There you are!’ he laughed, after several false starts. ‘It’s
running like clockwork now.’
His unaffected friendliness filled her with surprise and delight.
She was ashamed of having so long misunderstood him, and
she saw him now as a tower of strength, dependable and valiant.
938
EPILOGUE
When a fit of coughing compelled Antoine to stop helping her,
she thought : If only he could get well again, if only he could
be once more the man he used to be ! For her son’s sake it was
important Antoine should regain his health.
When the cough had abated, he set to work again and,
coming straight to the point, said :
‘Do you know, Jenny, I’m very relieved to see you like this
— I mean, so ... so settled, so calm.’
Jenny looked down at the ball she was winding, and repeated
meditatively, ‘Calm. . . .’
Yes, in spite of everything, it was true. She was sometimes
astonished herself at this peace which had come to her, deaden-
ing her grief As she pondered over Antoine’s remark, she
compared her present state of mind with the inner turmoil,
the agonizing feeling of emptiness, that had been hers three
and a half years ago. She saw herself as she was in the early
months of the war, without news of Jacques and fearing the
worst; now up in arms against the world; now prostrated
by her sense of loneliness and yet unable to bear the company
of others, shunning alike her mother and her home. It was as
if she were clutching at something she could not do without,
and which ever slipped through her fingers. She remembered
how she used to wander for whole afternoons in that unfamiliar
war-time Paris, making indefatigable pilgrimages to the places
she had visited with Jacques : the Gare de I’Est, St. Vincent-
de-Paul’s close, the Rue du Croissant, the cafes round about
the Stock Exchange where she had so often waited for him,
the side streets of Montrouge and that meeting-hall where, one
memorable night, Jacques had roused an audience to a wild
demonstration against the war. Then, when nightfall and her
exhaustion forced her to return home, desperately she would
fling herself, sobbing her heart out, on the bed where she had
once lain in Jacques’ arms, and fall into a fitful sleep, only to
awaken once more in the grey, hopeless dawn, to the prospect
of another desolate day. Yes, indeed, in comparison with that
early phase her present life was wonderfully calm. In the last
three years everything had changed around and within her —
even her memories of Jacques. How strange, she mused, that
939
SUMMER, 1914
even the most heartfelt love cannot escape the ravages of time !
When she thought of Jacques nowadays she never visualized
him as he would be to-day, nor even as he was in July, 1914.
No, the Jacques she saw with her mind’s eye was not the change-
able, nerve-ridden being she had known; she saw a seated
figure, statue-still, one hand resting on his thigh, the light from
a high studio window falling on his forehead, the Jacques, in
fact, of the portrait which was before her eyes night and day.
Suddenly a new thought waylaid her, an appalling realiza-
tion. She had just pictured what would happen were Jacques
unexpectedly to return, and her reaction was one of embarrass-
ment quite as much as of joy. Yes, the truth had to be faced :
if the Jacques of 1914 were to come back; if by some miracle
he were to appear in flesh and blood before the Jenny of to-day
— well, she could not possibly restore to him the place in her
heart which until now, as she believed, her faithful devotion
had kept intact, inviolate for ever.
Sh(5 gazed earnestly at Antoine, her eyes dark with distress.
But he noticed nothing; his attention was all on keeping the
skein taut between his outstretched fingers and guiding the
movement of the thread by leaning alternately right and left.
He dared not take his eyes off the wool slipping as if by magic
from his fingers. He felt rather foolish. His shoulders were
crapiped and aching, and he cursed himself for his silliness in
offering to help. The continual raising of his arms was making
his breathing more difficult every moment and he foresaw that,
after having stayed so close to the fire on the low chair, he
would probably catch cold undressing.
She would have liked to talk to him about herself, about
Jacques and the child, as she had done that morning in her
bedroom. That unwonted burst of expansiveness had given her
a sense of well-being which had lasted on throughout the day.
But to-night the ‘pent-up’ feeling had come back, the words
would not rise to her lips. There lay the tragedy of her inner
life; she was incapable of pouring out her heart to others,
doomed to inarticulateness. Even with Jacques she had never
been able to ‘let herself go’ whole-heartedly. How often had
he accused her of being ‘enigmatic!’ The memory of it rankled
940
EPILOGUE
Still, and cruelly as ever. How would things be, she wondered,
in years to come, between her and her son? Was it not all too
likely that, try as she might, her seeming aloofness and reserve
would raise a barrier between them?
Both looked up simultaneously as the clock struck, and only
then did they realize how long they had been silent.
‘Pity we can’t manage all the wool,’ Jenny smiled. ‘Let’s
finish off this skein, anyhow. ... I really must be going up.’
She began to wind the ball more quickly. ‘Otherwise I may
find Gise asleep and it would be a shame to wake her when
she’s just dropped off. She really does need a rest.’
He remembered, then, the twin beds he had seen and knew
why Gise had not said good-night to Jenny. They shared that
room, they slept there together beneath Jacques’ portrait, one
on each side of Paul’s cot. As he thought of Gise’s childhood
in M. Thibault’s flat, a rush of joy came over him. The poor
child has found a real home at last, he thought. Nicole Hequet’s
remark that she should marry Daniel came back to his mind.
Though he could not have said why, he did not think that likely.
And anyhow why need she marry? She could achieve happiness
and make the utmost of her life by casting in her lot with Jenny
and little Paul. In these two Jacques lived for her again and
on them she could lavish all the boundless affection and dog-
like fidelity that had lacked an outlet hitherto. And she would
settle down into a dear, dusky, grey-haired old creature, Paul’s
‘nice old Auntie Gi.’
The last thread slipped from Antoine’s fingers. Jenny got
up, put away the remaining skeins, and, after banking with
ashes the logs in the hearth, took up the big lamp from the
table.
‘Let me carry it,’ Antoine suggested rather half-heartedly.
But his breathing was so laboured that Jenny preferred to
spare him all exertion.
‘Don’t bother, thanks; I’m used to it. I’m always the last
to go to bed.’
In the doorway she looked back to make sure everything
was in order. Her gaze wandered round the old family living-
room, then settled on Antoine.
941
SUMMER, 1914
‘I’m going to bring up my child,’ she said determinedly,
‘right away from all this. Once the war’s ended I shall make
a complete change in my life and settle down somewhere else.’
‘What do you mean, somewhere else?’
‘I intend to say good-bye to all this,’ she went on in the
same firm, decided tone. ‘I want to get away.’
‘Where will you go?’ Something prompted him to add : ‘To
Switzerland, I suppose.’
She gazed at him in silence for some moments.
Then, ‘No,’ she said. ‘I thought of it of course. But since the
revolution last October all Jacques’ friends — the sincere ones,
anyhow — have moved to Russia. I, too, thought of Russia at
one time. But 1 believe it would be better for Paul to be brought
up as a Frenchman. So I shall stay in France. But 1 must get
away from Mother and Daniel, and live my own life. Perhaps
I’ll settle down somewhere in the country, with Gise. We’ll
work hard, and try to bring up Paul as he ought to be brought
up — as Jacques would have wished him to be.’
‘Listen, Jenny !’ Antoine exclaimed impulsively. ‘I’ve every
reason to expect that by then I shall have taken up my practice
again and, in that case, you must let me bear the expenses. . . .’
‘No, thank you, Antoine,’ she cut in, with a shake of her head.
‘I wouldn’t hesitate to accept your help if it were really neces-
sary. But I’m quite determined to earn my own living. I want
Paul to have an independent woman for his mother, a woman
who has won by hard work the right to have her own opinions
and to act as she thinks best. Don’t you approve?’
‘Of course !’
She smiled her gratitude. It seemed that she had said all
she wanted him to know, for she opened the door at once and
began walking up the stairs.
She led the way to his room, put down the lamp, and made
sure he had all he needed. Then, as she held out her hand, she
said :
‘I’ve a confession to make to you, Antoine.’
‘Yes?’ he said encouragingly.
‘Well ... I haven’t always . . . felt towards you ... as 1
do now.’
942
EPILOGUE
‘Same here,’ he smiled.
Seeing his smile, she hesitated. Her hand still lay in Antoine’s,
and she gazed at him with earnest eyes. At last she spoke.
‘But now, when I think of my child’s future, I . . . You
understand, don’t you? I feel so much braver when I think
you’ll always be there, and that Jacques’ son won’t be a stranger
to you. I’ll need your advice, Antoine. I want Paul to have all
his father’s good qualities without . . .’ She could not bring
herself to complete the sentence. But immediately she braced
herself up — he could feel the small hand quivering between
his fingers — and, like a rider putting a stubborn horse at a
high fence, went resolutely on. ‘I wasn’t blind to Jacques’ faults,
you know.’ She swallowed hard and fell silent again. After a
while she added, gazing into space — and the words seemed to
escape her, despite herself : ‘Only, the moment I was with him,
I forgot them.’
Her eyelids quivered. She was vainly trying to collect her
thoughts. Then she asked :
‘You’re not going until after lunch, are you? In that case
. . .’ She tried to force a smile to her lips. ‘In that case we’ll
see a bit of each other in the morning, won’t we?’ Then she
withdrew her hand, saying in a low voice ; ‘Now, try to get a
good night’s rest,’ and moved away towards her room.
13
Dr, Philipps Verdict
‘Dr. Thibault, sir.’ There was a joyous ring in the
old butler’s voice.
Philip, who had been seated at his desk, writing letters,
scrambled hurriedly to his feet; then, with the ungainly,
shambling stride so characteristic of him, walked up to Antoine,
943
SUMMER, 1914
who had halted on the threshold. Before gripping his hands,
he gave him one of those keen glances of his that seemed to
strike blue fire between the fluttering eyelids. Slowly wagging
his head, and with the bantering smile he affected, when deeply
moved, to hide his feelings, he said :
‘Congratulations, my dear fellow. You look stunning in your
field-service kit! . . . And how are you?’
Antoine thought : How he has aged ! The old professor’s
stoop was more pronounced than ever; the lanky body still
more unsteady on the spindle legs. The shaggy eyebrows and
goatee had gone snow-white; and yet the eyes and smile had
a youthful vivacity, a mischievous elation, which in the worn
old face struck an incongruous, almost a jarring note.
He was wearing red army-trousers of an antiquated pattern
with black stripes up the side, and a morning coat with
sagging tails, and this hybrid attire might have been devised
to typify his two-fold functions, half military', half civilian.
Towards the close of 1914 he had been appointed president of
a committee for the reorganization of the army medical service.
From that time on, he had devoted all his energies to combating
the inherent vices of a system which, from the outset, had
seemed to him disgracefully inadequate. His eminence in the
medical world gave him an exceptional freedom of action. He
had slashed through red tape, exposed abuses and moved the
powers-that-be to action. The salutary, if belated, reforms
introduced during the past three years were largely due to his
courage and pertinacity.
Philip was still holding Antoine’s hands, pumping them up
and down and making little hissing noises with his lips.
‘Well, well! It’s good to see you again. Tell me, how are
you?’ He shepherded Antoine towards his desk. ‘We’ve so many
things to say to each other, one hardly knows where to begin.’
He had ensconced Antoine in the big arm-chair in which his
patients sat. But, instead of taking his usual place behind his
desk, he made a long arm, drew up a light chair, seated himself
astride of it, close beside Antoine, and gazed at him earnestly.
‘Now, my dear fellow, let’s have a talk about yourself, this
mustard gas complication. How exactly do things stand?’
944
EPILOGUE
Antoine felt suddenly ill at ease. That expression of attentive
gravity on Philip’s face, his professional look, he had seen it a
hundred times before ; but this was the first time its focus was —
himself!
T’m looking a bit of a wreck, Chief, isn’t that so?’
‘A trifle thinner. But that was only to be expected.’
Philip took off his glasses, wiped them, replaced them care-
fully, then bent forward and, smiling, said :
‘Now then I Out with it I’
‘Well, Chief, I’ve been what they call, with bated breath,
'‘severely gassed.” And it’s no joke, I assure you.’
Philip made a slight gesture of impatience.
‘Quite so 1 Quite so ! Now let’s begin at the beginning. Your
first wound — has it healed all right?’
‘It would have practically disappeared — if the war had ended
for me last summer, before my brush with mustard gas. Still,
I inhaled very little of it, and I shouldn’t be in the state that
I’m in now. But it’s obvious that the lesions caused by the gas
in the right lung have been aggravated by the fact that it had
not expanded fully after that first wound.’
Philip made a wry face.
‘Yes,’ Antoine continued in a thoughtful tone. ‘There’s no
getting away from it, the lung is seriously affected. Needless to
say I’ll pull through. But it’ll be a long business. And” — a fit
of coughing silenced him for some moments — “and I’ll be a
bit of a crock most likely for the rest of my days.’
Philip cut in abruptly :
‘You’re staying to dinner, I hope?’
‘With pleasure. Chief Only, as I told you in my letter. I’m
on a diet.’
‘Denis has been told, and he’s laid in a supply of milk . . .
Now then I As you’re 'dining here, we’ve lots of time before us.
Let’s begin at the beginning. How exactly did it happen? I
thought your job kept you in the back areas.”
Antoine made a fretful gesture.
‘It was my own damned folly! At the end of last October I
was having a “cushy” time of it at Epernay, where I’d been
posted to organize, as the irony of fate would have it, a Gas
945
SUMMER, 1914
Casualty Clearing Station. We’d just taken La Malmaison
and I was struck by something I’d observed about the
gas cases sent to me after the fighting in the Chemin-
des-Dames sector: that amongst them were a large number
of Red Cross men and stretcher-bearers. The proportion
was unduly high, and I suspected that the protection
against gas in the dressing-stations was insufficient, or the
men were getting careless. I happened to know slightly the
M.O. in charge of the sector, and, bursting with mis-
guided zeal, 1 rushed off to him and got a permit to make
an inspection on the spot. It was coming back from that Jaunt
that I let myself get nabbed, like a damned fool. Just as 1 was
turning my back on the front line the Boches launched a gas-
attack ; that was my first piece of bad luck. My second was the
weather: the air was warm and muggy, unseasonably so. You
know’, of course, that moisture in the air develops the lethal
properties of mustard gas owing to the increased ionization.’
‘Go on,’ Philip said. He was resting his elbows on his knees,
his chin between his hands, and gazing intently at Antoine.
‘I was hurrying as much as I could to get back to the car I’d
left at Divisional H.Q,. and I tried to keep clear of the com-
munication trenches* as I knew they would be full of men (a
new company was taking over the front line). I thought
I’d found a short cut. It was pitch dark. Well, I’ll skip the
details . . . ’
‘Hadn’t you a gas-mask?’
‘Certainly. But it was a borrowed one. And I must have ad-
justed it badly. Or too late. I’d only one idea : to get back to
the car. When at last I reached D.H.Q,. I jumped into the car,
and we started off at once. I’d have done better to stop at the
divisional dressing-station and have a thorough gargle with
bicarbonate.’
‘Yes . . . Obviouslv.’
‘But I’d no notion that I’d been caught. It was only an hour
later that 1 began to feel a tickling sensation on my neck and
under my arms. We got back to Epernay at midnight. I swabbed
myself thoroughly with argyrol at once and went to bed. I
still thought I’d only had a whiff of it. But the bronchi were
946
EPILOGUE
more seriously involved than I’d suspected. Wasn’t it absurd !
I’d gone there to make sure that all the necessary precautions
were being taken, and, like a fool, I didn’t take them myself!’
‘What next?’ Philip cut in. And, unable to resist the tempta-
tion of showing he had some acquaintance with the subject,
added : ‘Next day 1 suppose you had trouble with your eyes,
digestion, and so on?’
‘Not a bit of it. There were hardly any symptoms the next
day. Only a slight erythema of the armpits. And a mild irrita-
tion of the skin, which did not alarm me in the least. No
vesication whatever. But there were deep-seated, insidious
affections of the bronchi, which weren’t detected till some days
later. You can guess the sequelae. A series of attacks of laryn-
gitis. Severe bronchitis, followed by sloughing of the tracheal
mucous membrane. In fact, the usual effects of the vapour
on the respiratory tract. And it’s been like that for the last
six months.’
‘And the vocal cords?’
‘In a shocking state. You can hear that for yourself. If I’m
fairly audible this evening it’s because I’ve been treating my
throat all day. Often I have complete aphonia.’
‘Inflammatory lesions of the vocal cords?’
‘No.’
‘Nervous lesions?’
‘No. The aphonia’s due to oedema of the inflamed ventricular
folds.’
‘Yes, obviously that would prevent phonation. Did they give
you strychnine?’
‘As much as a thirtieth of a grain t.i.d. It didn’t do the
slightest good. But it gave me some gruesome bouts of in-
somnia.’
‘How long have you been in the South?’
‘Since the beginning of the year. From Epernay they sent me
to the Base Hospital at Montmorillon, then to the place where I
am now, Le Mousquier, near Grasse. That was at the end of
December. The lung lesions seemed to be healing at that time.
But at Le Mousquier they found fibrosis of the lung. My
dyspnoea soon became extremely painful and acute. For no
947
SUMMER, 1914
apparent reason my temperature jumped up all at once to
103 or 103.5 dropped equally suddenly to 99.5. In
February I had an attack of dry pleurisy with rusty sputum.”
‘Have you still these bouts of pyrexia?’
‘Yes.’
‘To what do you attribute them?’
‘To pulmonary infection.’
‘Remittent infection, you mean?’
‘Yes, but it may well be chronic, for all I know.’
Their eyes met. In Antoine’s flickered an unuttercd question.
Philip raised his hand.
‘No, no, Thibault. If that is what you’re thinking of, you’re
worrying yourself quite needlessly. There exists no ascertain-
able connection between gassing and tuberculosis, so far as I’m
aware. You must know that even better than I. A mustard
gas case never develops phthisis unless there was a pre-
existing tuberculous condition. And you,’ he added, drawing
himself up, ‘may count yourself one of the lucky ones; you
have no pathological background of that nature to contend
with, so far as your lungs are concerned.’
He beamed on Antoine, who gazed .at him in silence for a
moment, then gave his old teacher an affectionate look and
returned his smile.
‘Yes, I know. I’m in luck in that respect.’
‘Then, too,’ Philip continued in the tone of one who thinks
aloud, ‘pulmonary oedema, which, I am told, is a common
after-effect of lung-irritant gases, rarely follows the inhalation
of mustard gas. In that respect, too, you’re lucky. There’s
something else. Pulmonary sequelae due to mustard gas are
less common and, I believe, less serious as a rule than those
due to other poison gases. I read an excellent article on the
subject the other day.’
‘Achard’s article?’ Antoine made a dubious gesture. ‘The
general belief is that, unlike the asphyxiants, mustard gas
attacks the small bronchi rather than the alveoli, and has a
less serious effect on the absorption of oxygen. But my personal
experience, and such observations as I’ve made of other cases,
don’t altogether bear this out. The truth is, I’m sorry to say,
948
EPILOGUE
that lungs affected by mustard gas develop all sorts of com-
plications, most of which are resistent to treatment and tend
to become chronic. Worse still, I’ve seen some mustard-gas
cases in which in tra- alveolar sclerosis combined with peri-
bronchial fibrosis was followed by collapse of the lung.’
There was a short silence.
‘And how’s the heart?’ Philip asked.
‘So far, it’s held out — more or less. But for how long can one
count on it? It would be folly to expect the myocardium not to
show signs of fatigue, when for months it’s been bearing the
brunt of a fight against toxaemia. Indeed I’m beginning to
wonder if the toxaemia isn’t already affecting the muscular
tissues and nervous system. During the last few weeks I’ve
noticed cardiovascular disfunction.’
‘ “Noticed?” In what way.’
‘Well, I haven’t yet been able to arrange for an X-ray
examination, and my doctors assure me that they can hear
nothing amiss. But how do I know? There are other ways of
finding out — by feeling my pulse and taking my blood-pressure,
for instance. Well, last week I observed bouts of tachycardia of
up to 120 and 135, without a rise in temperature of over 102-5
or 103. I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s some connexion
between this rise and the beginning of pulmonary oedema.
Don’t you agree?’
Philip evaded the question.
‘Why not make the work of the heart lighter by the frequent
use of wet-cups, and even blood-letting now and again?’
Antoine did not seem to have heard. His eyes were riveted
on his old teacher. Philip smiled and drew from his waistcoat
pocket the fat gold hunter without which Antoine had never
seen him. Then he bent forward and — more as if acting from
inveterate habit than out of a real desire for information —
closed his fingers on Antoine’s wrist.
A tedious minute passed. Philip remained unmoving, his eyes
fixed on the second-hand. Suddenly Antoine started slightly;
the sight of that earnest enigmatic face poring over the watch-
dial had called back to his memory a long-forgotten incident.
One morning at the hospital, in the early days of his intimacy
949
SUMMER, 1914
with Philip, as they were leaving a consulting-room where the
Chief had just had to deliver a particularly embarrassing
diagnosis, in a burst of unwonted expansiveness he had clutched
Antoine’s arm and said: ‘Here’s a tip for you, my boy . . .
When he’s up against a critical problem, what a doctor needs
above all is a moment to himself to think things out. Well,
here’s a dodge to get it — and it’s never known to fail. Out with
your watch ! A doctor should always have something really
striking in that line, something big as a saucer, that catches the
eye. That watch is his salvation. He can have an anxious family
flustering round him, he can be attending to a street-accident
with the usual crowd of people pestering him with questions ;
well, if he wants to get a breathing-space he has only to make
that magic gesture — fish out his turnip and take the patient’s
pulse. A dead silence falls at once ; he can ruminate in peace.
So long as he keeps his eye glued on the dial, he can weigh
pros and cons, think out his diagnosis, as composedly as if he
were sitting in his consulting-room, his chin propped on his
hand . . . So, my dear boy, take my tip — and make haste to
buy a large, impressive timepiece.’
Philip had not noticed Antoine’s slight start. He released the
wrist and slowly straightened up.
‘The pulse is rapid, obviously. And a bit irregular in force.
But the rate is steady.’
‘Just now, perhaps. But some days — especially towards bed-
time — it’s thready, feeble, almost impalpable. How do you
account for that? And whenever the lung condition gets worse,
the pulse rate goes up. Paroxysmally as a rule.’
‘Have you tried pressing on your eyeballs?’
‘No use. It doesn’t make any difference.’
There was another silence. Then Antoine remarked with a
forced smile :
‘I’m already labelled “pulmonary debility.” The day when
I’m labelled “heart debility” too . . . !’
Philip cut him short with a wave of his hand.
‘Nonsense ! Hypertension and tachycardia are quite often
mere defensive reactions — that’s common knowledge, isn’t it?
For instance in slight cerebral embolisms — you know it as well
950
EPILOGUE
as I do — it’s by hypertension and tachycardia that the heart
puts up a successful fight against the obstruction of the pul-
monary circulation. Roger pointed that out first, and it’s been
confirmed by many subsequent observers.’
Antoine made no reply, choked by another paroxysm of
coughing.
‘What treatments?’ Philip asked, but without seeming to
attach much importance to his question.
As soon as Antoine got his breath back, he said wearily ;
‘All sorts. We’ve tried everything. No opiates, naturally.
Sulphur . . . and arsenic. And then sulphur . . . and arsenic,
again and again.’
His voice was hoarse, muffled, spasmodic. The strain of
talking for so long had been too much ; he relapsed into silence.
Closing his eyes, he remained motionless for some moments, his
head flung back, his shoulders pressed against the rungs of the
chair. When he opened his eyes, he perceived Philip’s gaze
lingering affectionately on him. There was a great gentleness
in that look, and Antoine found it more profoundly disturbing
than any definite token of anxiety.
‘You didn’t expect to see me looking such a wreck!’ he
exclaimed impulsively.
‘On the contrary,’ Philip put in at once, with a laugh. ‘After
what you told me in your last letter, 1 didn’t expect to see you
so far on the road to recovery.’ Then, rising, he said : ‘Now I’d
like to listen a bit to what is going on inside.’
Antoine struggled to his feet and took off his tunic.
‘We’ll do it in the best professional manner, if you don’t
min^,’ said Philip cheerfully, pointing to the couch covered
with a white sheet on which he had his patients lie.
Antoine complied. Kneeling beside the couch in silence,
Philip carried out a thorough auscultation. Then abruptly he
rose to his feet.
‘Well, well I’ He adroitly avoided meeting Antoine’s anxious
gaze. ‘Certainly there are a few moist rales at various spots.
A little fibrosis, may be, and some congestion right up to the
apex of the right lung.’ At last he brought himself to look
Antoine in the face. ‘But you knew that already, didn’t you?’
951
SUMMER, 1914
‘Yes.’ Antoine slowly sat up on the couch.
‘Obviously.’ Philip moved with his quick, jerky step to his
desk and sat down at it. Mechanically he took a fountain-pen
from his pocket, as if about to write a prescription. ‘There’s
emphysema undoubtedly. And, to speak quite frankly, I expect
the mucous surfaces will give trouble for some time to come.’
He was fiddling with his pen and, his eyebrows arched, ex-
amining absent-mindedly the various objects on the table. ‘But
that’s all there is to it,’ he concluded, closing with a decisive
slam the telephone-book which had been lying open on the
table.
Antoine rose from the couch; then, resting his palms on the
edge of the desk, gazed down earnestly at his old friend. Philip
put the cap on his pen, replaced it in his pocket and, raising
his eyes, summed up, weighing his words.
‘It’s an infernal nuisance, my dear boy, I grant you. . . .
But no worse than that.’
Antoine drew himself up, without a word; then walked to
the mirror above the fireplace and began putting on his collar.’
Two discreet taps sounded on the door.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ Philip announced briskly.
He was still sitting at the desk. Antoine went up to him and
again bent forward, resting his hands on the table.
‘1 assure you. Chief,’ he said in a weary voice, ‘I do every-
thing that’s humanly possible. Everything. I’ve given all the
known treatments a thorough trial. I study my case clinically
as if I were one of my own patients ; I’ve kept up a case-history
from the very beginning. And I’ve had dozens of X-ray ex-
aminations, blood tests and the rest of it. I think of nothing but
my health — how to avoid risks, how to make the best of every
treatment.’ He sighed. ‘All the same there are days when one
can’t help feeling utterly disheartened.’
‘Nonsense! You tell me yourself that you’ve noticed signs of
improvement.’
‘Signs of improvement? But I’m far from sure of having
noticed any!’ Antoine had spoken without thinking, on the
spur of the moment. And unconsciously he had raised his voice.
No sooner the words uttered than a sensation of discomfort
952
EPILOGUE
came over him ; it was as if the words had suddenly released a
lurking thought that never yet had he allowed to reach the
level of consciousness. Small beads of sweat formed on his
upper lip.
There was no telling if Philip had noticed his friend’s dis-
comfiture, or guessed what anguish lay behind it. The old
professor always kept his feelings well in hand ; might not this
now account for the unruffled serenity of his regard? However,
what lingering suspicions Antoine might have as to Philip’s
genuineness were effectively dispelled when he saw his shoulders
lift in amiable derision and heard him saying cheerfully in his
high-pitched, ironical voice :
‘Do you want to know exactly how I feel about it, my dear
boy? Well, I’m vastly relieved to find your progress is so slow.’
He paused to relish for a moment Antoine’s bewilderment.
‘Listen ! There have been six young men who studied under me,
whom I’d come to look on almost as my sons ; three have been
killed, two are maimed for life. And, selfish as it sounds, I don’t
deny I’m glad to know the sixth is now in safety, nearly a
thousand miles from the Front, and obliged to stay many
months more in the South of France. I haven’t the slightest
wish to see you cured before the war is over. Put that in your
pipe and smoke it, my boy! If you hadn’t been gassed last
October, who knows if we’d be able to dine together to-night?
Which reminds me’ — he rose briskly to his feet — ‘dinner’s
awaiting us in the next room.’
His old friend’s cheerfulness was infectious, and Antoine
thought, as he followed him out : He’s right. My constitution’s
sound as a bell, and it’ll see me through . . .
A plate of soup steamed on the table. For many years Philip’s
dinner had consisted of soup and stewed fruit only.
A cup and a jug of milk stood in front of Antoine’s seat.
‘Denis hasn’t warmed your milk, but he can heat it up in a
moment, if you like.’
‘No, I always drink it cold, thanks.’
‘Sugar?’
A paroxysm of coughing prevented Antoine from replying ;
he merely shook his head. Philip refrained from looking at him.
953
SUMMER, 1914
He judged it best to take no notice, and, at the first opportunity,
to give their conversation a new turn. Meanwhile, waiting for
the coughing fit to end, he stirred his soup meditatively. At last,
to end a silence that was getting on the nerves of both, he began
speaking, in a tone as natural as he could make it.
‘I’ve spent another strenuous day wrangling with our Hygiene
Service. You’d never believe the muddle they are in, our
official regulations for typhoid immunization.’
Antoine smiled, and drank some milk to ease his throat.
‘Still, Chief, you’ve put in some grand work in that depart-
ment during the last three years.’
‘It was uphill work, I can assure you !’ He groped for another
topic, failed to find one and continued. ‘Yes, uphill work
indeed! When I was asked in 1915 to reorganize the Army
Medical Service, you simply can’t imagine the state of things I
found !’
‘Oh yes I can !’ Antoine all but exclaimed. ‘I was in the thick
of it I’ But he was careful to avoid talking as far as possible,
and confined himself to listening with an understanding smile.
‘At that time,’ Philip went on, ‘casualties were evacuated in
ordinary trains, which had brought up troops or supplies to the
line. Often as not in cattle-trucks ! I saw with my own eyes poor
devils who had had to wait twenty-four hours in a freezing
railway-carriage because there weren’t enough casualties to
make up a train of the regulation length. For food they usually
had to depend on what the people of the locality provided.
Their wounds were dressed by well-meaning ladies with the
most rudimentary ideas of first-aid work; or by aged local
chemists. And when at last the train got under way they often
had two or three days of it, before finally they were lifted off
their straw beds. You can guess the percentage of tetanus cases
we had in almost every train-load. Those who survived were
bundled into overcrowded hospitals, which were short of every-
thing : antiseptics, bandages and, needless to say, rubber gloves.’
‘I remember seeing two or three miles behind the lines’ —
Antoine had difficulty in getting the words out — ‘operating
stations ... in which they boiled the forceps ... in dirty old
saucepans . . . over a wood fire.’
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‘Well that could be passed over, at a pinch.’ Philip gave one
of his short, whinnying laughs. ‘They were run off their feet.
The supply was greater than the demand, the war was not con-
forming to official forecasts, and overdoing its ravages. But
what was inexcusable’ — his voice was serious again — ‘was the
way in which the mobilization of our medical men was planned
and conducted. From the first day the Army had available a
great number of really first-rate medical officers. Well, when I
did my first round of inspection I found such eminent prac-
titioners as Deutsch and Hallouin serving as second-grade
orderlies in ambulance units commanded by Army M.O.s
thirty years old or less. The men at the head of our principal
medical services were perfect ignoramuses. One had the im-
pression they’d never used the knife on anything more serious
than a whitlow, but simply because they were Colonels they’d
order and, worse still, perform, the most serious operations. On
the vaguest grounds they’d insist on amputation, and refuse to
listen to the advice of the civilian medical men — even hospital
surgeons of wide experience — whom they had under their
orders. Yes, we had our work cut out, I and my colleagues ! It
took us months to get the least reform made in the system. We
had to move heaven and earth to get the Regulations amended
so that the wounded should be treated by professional doctors.
Equally hard it was to dispose of that absurd practice of filling
the most distant hospitals to start with, regardless of the severity
and urgency of individual cases. They thought nothing of
entraining men with cranial injuries to Bordeaux or Perpignan ;
naturally gangrene or tetanus finished most of them off en
route. Poor fellows who might have been saved in nine cases out
of ten, if they’d been trephined within twelve hours of being
wounded.’
Suddenly his anger fell, and he smiled.
‘You’ll never guess who helped me when I started my cam-
paign! One of your patients, my dear boy. You know; the
mother of that little girl we put in plaster, years ago, you and
I, and sent to Berck . . .’
‘You mean — er — Madame de Battaincourt?’ Antoine said in
some confusion.
955
SUMMER, 1914
‘Yes. You wrote to me about her — don’t you remember? — in
1914.’
It came back to Antoine that, on learning that Mary,
Huguette’s English governess, had left her charge abruptly and
returned to England on the outbreak of war, he had asked
Philip to keep an eye on his little patient. Philip had gone to
Berck, and formed the opinion that there was now no risk in
her returning to a more or less normal life.
‘I saw Madame de Battaincourt on several occasions about
that time. That woman seems to know all the bigwigs in Paris.
Within twenty-four hours she’d fixed up for me an interview
that I’d been vainly trying to arrange for during the past six
weeks ; what’s more, thanks to her, I was able to talk freely to
the great man himself, to show him through the documents
I’d brought and generally to have things out with him. That
interview took the best part of two hours — and it proved a
turning-point.’
Antoine said nothing. He was staring at his empty cup with
a quite uncalled-for earnestness; suddenly aware of this, he
made haste to replenish it with milk.
‘She’s grown into a very pretty girl, -has your young protegee,’
said Philip, who was surprised that Antoine had made no en-
quiries about Huguette. ‘I’ve kept in touch with her. She comes
to see me every three or four months.’
Still uncomfortably wondering if Philip knew of his liaison
with Huguette’s mother, Antoine realized it was for him to say
something
‘Is she living in Touraine?’ he asked.
‘No, at Versailles, with her stepfather. Battaincourt’s settled
there so as to be near Paris. Chatenaud is treating him. Rotten
luck he’s had, poor Battaincourt !’
No, Antoine thought, he doesn’t know, or he’d have avoided
talking of his rotten luck.’
‘Did you hear,’ Philip went on, ‘how he got wounded?’
‘Only vaguely. It happened when he was on leave, didn’t it?’
‘He’d put in two years in the front line, without a scratch.
And then one night, when he was travelling to Paris on forty-
eight hours’ leave, his train stopped at the sorting station,
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Saint-Just-en-Chaussee. Just at that moment, some Boche
’planes came over and dropped their bombs on the station.
When they hauled him out of the wreckage his face was cut
to pieces, one eye gone and the other in a very bad way.
Chatenaud is doing all he can for him ; he’s practically blind,
you know.’
Antoine recalled Simon’s clear, forthright gaze and the im-
pression it had made on him when they had met just before
the war started, at his place; it was that meeting which had
led him to break with Anne.
‘Do you know’ — his voice was so weak that Philip had to lean
towards him — ‘do you know if Madame de Battaincourt is
living with them?’
‘No. She’s in America.’
‘Really?’ He was surprised at his feeling of relief on hearing
this news.
Philip, smiling to himself, watched Denis place on the table
a bowl of stewed cherries. Then he slowly helped himself, keep-
ing silence till the servants had left the room.
‘The mother ... a queer sort of creature, by all accounts.’
He paused, his spoon in air. ‘What’s your idea of her?’
Again Antoine asked himself ‘Does he know . . . ?’ Tongue-
tied, he conjured up a fleeting smile. In Philip’s company he
always lost his self-assurance, became once more the young
medical student overawed by his professor.
‘Yes,’ Philip went on, ‘she’s in the States. Last time I saw
Huguette she said, “Mamma’s going to live in New York; she
has lots of friends there.” From information I’ve picked up in
various quarters, I gather she was sent there on a “special
mission,” for propaganda work of sorts. And that this “special
mission” synchronized exactly with the recall to the U.S.A.
of a certain American officer who’d held a post at the Paris
Embassy for some time.’
No, Antoine decided, he certainly doesn’t know . . .
Philip spat out some cherry-stones, wiped his beard, and
continued :
‘That anyhow is what Lebel told me. I.ebel, you know, is
running the hospital that Madame de Battaincourt built in
957
SUMMER, 1914
her estate near Tours ; I understand she still continues to sub-
sidize it — most handsomely. But one must take what Lebel
says with a grain of salt. Rumour has it that he too, for all his
grey hair, was once a very intimate collaborator of the lady’s.
That would explain why he threw everything up and went and
buried himself in Touraine soon after the outbreak of war. . . .
Won’t you finish your milk?’
‘Thanks, two cups are the most I can manage,’ Antoine smiled.
‘I hate milk really!’
Philip did not insist, folded his napkin clumsily, and rose.
‘Let’s go back to my sanctum 1’ He linked his arm affection-
ately in Antoine’s, and as he led him back to the study, went on
talking. ‘You saw the peace-terms imposed on Rumania by the
Central Powers? Significant, eh? It means that they’re supplied
with all the oil they need. Oh, they’re on velvet just now. Why
should they want to make peace?’
‘For the good reason that the American army is coming into
action.’
‘I wouldn’t bank too much on that ! If they don’t bring off
a decisive victory this summer — which is unlikely, though it’s
thought they mean to make another drive at Paris — well, by
next year they’ll have Russian troops and war material to off-
set the American troops and war material. And what is to be
expected when there are two approximately equal forces pitted
against each other, neither of which is strong enough to crush
the adversary? Only one thing is possible ; they’ll go on fighting
until both sides are equally and utterly exhausted.’
‘How about Wilson? Don’t you think anything will come of
his very sensible proposals?’
‘Wilson might be living in another planet for all he knows
about this war ! And anyhow, at present, there’s not the slightest
sign that anyone in England or in France wants peace. (I’m
speaking of the leaders.) In Paris and in London they’re out
for victory at all costs ; any talk of peace is branded treachery.
People like Briand are under a cloud ; and so will Wilson be — if
he isn’t already I’
‘Still, peace may be forced on them.’ Antoine was thinking
of what Rumelles had said.
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‘I don’t believe Germany will ever be in a position to impose
peace on us. No, I repeat, in my opinion, the opposing forces
are more or less equally matched, and I don’t see any other
issue of the war than complete exhaustion on both sides.’
He had seated himself again in his chair behind the desk,
after amiably waving Antoine towards the couch, on which he
had stretched himself only too readily.
‘We may live,’ Philip continued, ‘to see the end of the war.
But what we shall not live to see is — peace. I mean a stability
in European relations that can be counted on to last.’ Slightly
flustered, he took himself up. ‘I said “JVe,” young though you
are, because, to my thinking, it will take several generations to
achieve that stability.’ Again he paused, shot a discreet glance
at Antoine, stroked his beard abstractedly, then went on, with
a gesture of discouragement: ‘Is a stable peace even to be
thought of under present conditions? This war has been a nasty
blow for the democratic ideal. Sembat was right ; democracies
aren’t made for war, they melt, like wax in an oven, when a
war breaks. And the longer the war lasts, the less chance Europe
has of remaining, or becoming, democratic. One can easily
picture such men as Clemenceau or Lloyd George playing the
despot in their respective countries when the war is over. The
man-in-the-street won’t protest ; he’s broken in to martial law.
And gradually he’ll surrender even his pet “republican” pre-
tensions to absolutism. Only see what’s happening in France ;
the distribution of food-stuffs is State-controlled, consumption
is rationed, officialdom’s rampant in every field of action, in
trade and industry; it controls private enterprise — with the
moratorium, and freedom of thought — with the censorship.
We put up with all these things as emergency measures; we
persuade ourselves they’re unavoidable in wartime. To my
mind they’re premonitory symptoms of the total servitude that’s
coming; and once people are well inured to the yoke, there’ll
be no shaking it off.’
‘Did you ever meet Studler, “the Caliph” as we called him,
one of my collaborators?’
‘That jew, you mean, with a big Assyrian beard and a
Mahatma’s eyes?’
959
SUMMER, 1914
‘Yes. He was wounded, and now he’s somewhere on the
Salonika front. From which he sends me now and then prophetic
homilies, in his peculiar vein. Well, Studler declares that the
war will lead inevitably to Revolution (with a capital “R”).
First in the vanquished countries, then in the victorious ones.
W’hether by force or gradually. Revolution’s bound to spread,
he says, to every nation.’
Philip gave a non-committal grunt.
‘He predicts,’ Antoine continued, ‘a breakdown of the modern
world, the collapse of capitalism. He, too, thinks the war will
go on till Europe’s down and out. But when everything’s been
swept away or levelled flat, a Better World, he says, will come
into being. From the ruins of our civilization he sees a new order
arising, a sort of worldwide confederacy, which will organize
collectively all the life on our planet, on an entirely new basis.’
He had had to force his voice towards the end of this long
bout of talking. A fit of coughing doubled him up. Philip,
without seeming to take notice, observed each movement.
‘Anything may happen!’ He always enjoyed giving his
imagination a run, and there was a glint of amused interest in
his eye. ‘After all, why not? Perhaps, the simple faith of ’89
which led us to fly in the face of every biological fact and claim
that all men are absolutely equal and should be treated as such
by the laws — perhaps that simple faith, which saw us through
a century, has worked itself out and is destined to give place
to some other damnfool notion, equally attractive and equally
absurd ! A new ideology which in its turn will inspire thinkers
and reformers, and with which humanity will dope itself — till
further notice. Till the wheel comes full circle once again.’
He kept silence for some moments, while Antoine went on
coughing. When he spoke again there was an undertone of irony
in his voice.
‘It’s not impossible. But I’ll leave these roseate dreams to
your Oriental friend. The future which I foresee is much nearer,
and much less roseate. I don’t believe any government will be
ready to give up the absolute power that this war has granted
it. And I’m afraid the age of liberal institutions is over and
will not return for many a long year. Which, I admit, is a hard
960
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knock for men of my generation. We were so absolutely sure
that it had come to stay, our democratic freedom, and that
such questions could never be re-opened. But every question,
at every time, can be re-opened. Perhaps we, too, were dreamers.
Perhaps at the close of the nineteenth century we took our dreams
for durable realities because we had the good luck to be living
in an exceptionally calm and prosperous period of history.’
He was speaking in the jarring, rather nasal voice which was
so apt to disconcert his hearers, his elbows resting on the arms
of his chair, his long, reddish nose pointing towards his linked
hands, and his eyes fixed on his fingers, which he was clasping
and unclasping in little nervous jerks. He seemed to be talking
to himself.
‘We thought mankind had cut its wisdom teeth. We fancied
we were nearing an age in which common sense, moderation
and mutual forbearance would at last prevail throughout the
world. In which intelligence would control the evolution of the
social organism. Who knows if, in the years to come, historians
won’t write us down a generation of fools and simpletons who
gulled themselves with wishful thinking, with illusions about
man and his capacity for civilization? Perhaps we deliberately
shut our eyes to certain innate qualities of the race. For in-
stance, it may well be that the destructive instinct, a periodi-
cally recurring impulse to smash to pieces all we have labori-
ously built up, is one of the fundamental laws that limit the
creative possibilities of human nature — one of those mysterious
and disheartening first principles which the sociologist has to
take into account and reckon with. . . . But it’s a far cry from
that viewpoint to the forecasts of your friend, the Caliph !’ he
added with a chuckle. Antoine, he noticed, was still worried by
his cough. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like a drink? A glass of water?
A spoonful of codeine?’
Antoine shook his head. After two or three minutes, during
which Philip paced the room in silence, he felt a little better.
Then straightening up, he wiped the tears which were rolling
down his cheeks, and forced his mouth into a smjle. His features
were drawn and darkly suffused with blood ; his forehead beaded
with sweat.
961
II
SUMMER, 1914
‘I think . . . I’ll be going . . . Chief,’ he panted ; each word
rasped his throat like fire. ‘Sorry . . .’ He smiled again, and
with an effort rose to his feet. ‘I’m in a damned bad way . . .
you can’t deny it !’
Philip did not seem to have heard.
‘This habit of prophesying !’ he exclaimed. ‘I may jeer at
your “Caliph” friend, but I’ve been going on exactly like him.
It’s a fool’s game anyhow. Everything we’ve seen happening
during the last four years has been absurd. And whatever these
absurdities lead us to predict is equally absurd. One can
criticize, I grant you. One can even damn the state of things.
(That, anyhow, isn’t absurd.) But as for predicting what is
going to come of it — it’s mere waste of breath. Don’t forget
this, my dear boy ; there’s no getting away from it. The only —
I was going to say “scientific” method, but let’s be more
modest: the only rational method, the only one that doesn’t
play you false is the tracking down of error, not the search for
truth. It’s none too easy to discern what’s false, but it can be
done; and it’s the utmost, literally the utmost, one can do. All
the rest is . . . moonshine.’
Noticing that Antoine was on his feet and listening absently,
he too rose.
‘When shall I see you again? When are you leaving?’
‘To-morrow morning, at eight,’
Philip gave a slight start. He waited a moment to be sure his
voice was steady before murmuring :
‘So soon !’
As he followed Antoine out of the room, his eyes were fixed
on the bent back, the lean scraggy neck emerging from the
tunic-collar. And he was seized with fear, fear of betraying
himself, of the silence that had fallen on them, of his own
thoughts. Hastily he jerked out a string of questions.
‘Anyhow, are you satisfied with the hospital? Are the staff
efficient? Do you think the climate agrees with you?’
‘For the winter nothing could be better,’ Antoine replied,
still walking ahead. ‘But I dread the summer there. So much so
that I think I’ll apply for a transfer. What I need is the country.
A brisk climate, without humidity. Somewhere in the pines,
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perhaps. Arcachon might do, only it’s so hot. How about some
place in the Pyrenees — one of the spas, Cauterets or Luchon,
for instance.-”
He had entered the hall and was reaching towards the hat-
peg, when he turned round rather abruptly and asked :
‘What do you advise. Chief?’
And suddenly, gazing at that face on which, during the ten
years they had worked side by side, he had learned to read as in
an open book each fleeting change of mood, he had a glimpse
in the small grey eyes blinking behind the glasses of an in-
voluntary avowal — a vast compassion. Philip’s look, his whole
expression seemed to be saying: ‘What’s the good? What
difference can it make where you spend the summer? Your case
is hopeless — and there is no escape.’
‘Good God !’ Antoine all but cried aloud, so brutal was the
shock. But then he told himself: In my heart of hearts I too
knew it : I knew there was no hope.
‘Quite so . . . Cauterets,’ Philip mumbled nervously ; then,
pulling himself together: ‘Or why not simply Touraine? Or
Anjou, for that matter?’
Antoine was staring at the floor; he dared no longer meet
the eyes in which he had read his death-sentence. How the
Chief’s voice rang false ! he thought. Horrible !
With a trembling hand he put on his service-cap, then walked
to the door, without looking up. His one idea now was to cut
short their leave-taking, to be left alone — alone to grapple with
the thing of dread within him.
‘Yes, Touraine. Or Anjou,’ Philip repeated feebly. ‘I’ll make
enquiries. I’ll write to you . . .’
His eyes still downcast under the cap-peak whose shadow
hid the discomposure of his face, mechanically Antoine held
out his hand. The old doctor grasped it; a little watery click
came from his lips. Freeing his hand, Antoine opened the door
and hurried out.
Leaning over the banisters, Philip quavered after him :
‘Yes. Why not try Anjou . . . ?’
963
SUMMER, 1914
14
Air-raid
Outside, the city was plunged in darkness. Hooded street-
lamps, few and far between, cast pools of bluish light upon the
pavement. The streets were almost empty. Now and then, but
rarely, a car glided cautiously by, honking insistently.
Walking unsteadily, hardly .knowing where he was, Antoine
crossed the Boulevard Malesherbes and entered the Rue
Boissy-d’Anglas. His shoulders sagged, his breath came in short
gasps, his head seemed hollow and full of echoes like a sounding-
box. He walked so close alongside the house-fronts that at times
he scraped the walls with his elbow. A vast indifference had
settled on him ; a respite of no thoughts, no pain.
When he grew conscious of his whereabouts he found he was
under the trees in the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. In front of
him, beyond the tree-trunks, lay the Place de la Concorde,
dimly lit but bathed in the starry radiance of the soft spring
night, and criss-crossed by the moving shapes of cars that
slunk out of the shadows like animals with glowing eyes, and
receded into darkness. Noticing a bench, he went towards it ;
instinctively, before sitting down, he checked himself. ‘Mustn’t
catch cold !’ (Only to retort forthwith : ‘What can that matter —
now?’) The presage he had glimpsed in Philip’s eyes, in a flash
of cruel insight, possessed his mind; more than that, it had
invaded his body, too, and like a monstrous parasitic growth, a
gnawing tumour, was driving out all else before its vast pro-
liferation.
His back propped against the hard boards, his arms locked on
his chest as if to constrict this foreign body lodged within him
and eating out his life, he ran over in his mind the incidents of
the last few hours. He saw the Chief straddling his chair, heard
his opening remark, ‘Let’s begin at the beginning. Your first
wound — has it healed all right?’ and methodically recapitulated
the answers he had made. But gradually the words he heard
himself using became slightly different from what he had
964
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actually said ; he now set forth his case in its true light, with
the precision and detachment that had been lacking in his
previous version. In all their inexorable reality he described
his successive attacks, the ever-shortening periods of remission,
and the relapses every time more serious. He made clear the
steady, irremediable aggravation of his malady. And with his
mind’s eye he saw how, as his narrative proceeded, the anxiety
on his old friend’s face grew more and more apparent, till
plain as a spoken word it voiced a clear prognosis ; death. . . .
Antoine’s breath was coming in laboured gasps, his face was
clammy with sweat ; drawing his handkerchief from his pocket,
he mopped his brows.
Suddenly in the distance a long-drawn ululation rose and
fell across the silent darkness ; but he heard it vaguely, as in a
dream.
He was visualizing himself on the couch, the examination
ended, rising laboriously to the sitting position and shaking his
head with feigned resignation. ‘No, Chief, you see it for your-
self, I haven’t a dog’s chance !’ And Philip stared at the floor
without replying.
To shake off the stifling oppression that was gaining on him,
he scrambled to his feet. And as he stood unmoving in the dark-
ness, there crossed his mind, like a waft of purer air from the
abyss, a consoling thought : ‘We doctors, anyhow, have always
a way out — a means of cutting short suspense . . . and
suffering.’
His legs were giving way beneath him; he sat down again.
Two shadowy forms, two women, dashed out from under-
neath the trees. A second later all together all the sirens of the
city were blaring in a shrill cacophony, and the few lights
dotting the Place de la Concorde went out abruptly.
‘The crowning touch !’ he smiled to himself sardonically.
He listened attentively. A faint drumming filled the air.
From the paths behind him came sounds of hurrying feet, of
scared, excited voices; suddenly a little group of frightened
people ran helter-skelter by and vanished into the night. Cars,
all lights out, were speeding down the Avenue Gabriel, hooting
loudly. A police squad doubled past. He remained seated, his
965
SUMMER, 1914
shoulders hunched, staring into the darkness, lost in a dream,
indifferent to all human concerns.
Some minutes passed before his mind began to march again.
The dull thuds of distant explosions, followed by an intermittent
roll of gunfire, roused him from his coma. ‘Those must be the
batteries on Mount Val^rien,’ he thought. ... It came back
to him that Rumelles had mentioned an air-raid shelter not
far away, in the Admiralty Building.
The boom of guns persisted in the distance. Rising, he began
to walk towards the Concorde, but halted at the pavement’s
edge. The night-sky of Paris had waked to vivid life ; from all
points of the compass searchlights were playing on the zenith,
peopling the blue, star-strewn vault with wraith-like gleams
that swerved and clashed and circled in a mazy dance — some-
times pausing suddenly to peer, like questing eyes, into a nook
of darkness, then swinging off again upon their wayward course.
He could not bring himself to step off the pavement on to
the road, but remained gazing up till his neek ached with the
strain. If only I eould lie down, he thought, and elose my eyes !
Might take a sleeping-draught. Yes . , . sleep ! But an in-
vincible lassitude weighed on him, his limbs seemed paralysed.
Better be getting back. A taxi? No, the huge square was life-
less, empty, plunged in darkness. Now and again as a search-
light raked the sky overhead, it emerged momently from the
gloom, and he had a fleeting glimpse of balustrades, palely
glimmering statues, the Obelisk and fountains, ringed by tall,
spectral lamp-posts; and he seemed gazing on the city of a
dream, a place on which a curse had fallen, leaving it for ever
desolate ; an ancient capital lost in the desert sands.
With an effort he overcame his torpor and, moving mech-
anically like a sleep-walker, set out across this city of the dead,
heading straight for the Obelisk, so as to reach the angle formed
by the Tuileries Gardens and the Seine bank. It seemed inter-
minable, this lonely walk aeross a lunar landscape under a sky
seething with livid light. A group of Belgian soldiers dashed
past him. Then an elderly couple, arms locked clumsily round
each other’s waists, blundered across his path, flotsam drifting
through the night. The man shouted : ‘There’s a shelter in the
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underground station. Over there !’ It did not occur to him to
answer till they were out of sight.
The air was pulsing with the sounds of unseen engines merged
into one vast, clangorous roar. To the east an anti-aircraft barrage
was in full blast, and the sky full of bursting shells ; every minute
or so another battery, nearer each time, was coming into action.
The veering shafts of light made it impossible to see the shell-
bursts. Suddenly he heard, between the crashes of the guns, a
rattle of machine-guns. . . . He decided to make a move in
the direction of the Pont-Royal.
Not a vehicle was in sight as he groped his way along the
embankment. Not a light. Not a living being. Under the
frenzied sky the world lay void as a dead planet. He was alone —
alone with the wide, calm river, softly, serenely luminous as
a quiet country stream under a starry sky.
As for a moment he halted, a new thought pierced the twi-
light of his mind. T’d known it all along; I knew quite well that
I was doomed.’ Then he walked on again, unthinking, like an
automaton.
The din had grown so incessant that there was no distin-
guishing the nature of the sounds. Then suddenly the dull thud
of an explosion drowned all other noises. More followed. Bombs,
he thought. They’ve got through the barrage. In the far dis-
tance, towards the Louvre, black rows of chimney-pots leapt
into view against a pink glow spreading up the sky. Looking
round, he saw the other fires kindling — in the Levallois and
Puteaux suburbs, he judged by the direction. ‘The whole town’s
ablaze.’ He had forgotten his own affliction. Under the vague,
unseen menace brooding in the heavens like the blind wrath of
a vindictive god, a morbid exhilaration set the blood coursing
in his veins, a rush of fierce resentment gave him back his
strength. Quickening his pace, he soon came to the bridge,
crossed the Seine and turned into the Rue du Bac. In the inky
darkness of the narrow street, he tripped over a refuse-bin, and
the sharp effort he had to make to right himself sent a stab of
pain through his chest. Stepping off the pavement, he set his
course by the ribbon of light-swept sky above, between the
housetops.
967
SUMMER, 1914
There was a sudden clangour in the streets behind; he had
just time to spring back to the pavement before two monstrous
engines hurtled by, without lights and followed by a car flying
a pennon. A voice beside him said : ‘The Fire Brigade.’ Antoine
saw the dim form of a man sheltering in a doorway. Every few
seconds he craned his neck forward and glanced skywards, as
if to see whether a shower was ending.
Without a word Antoine started on his way again. His
weariness had come back, and he struggled painfully ahead,
like a haulier towing a barge, laden with his obsession. ‘I knew
it. I’ve known it all along.’ In his distress was no surprise ; he
was more like a man staggering beneath a heavy load, than one
who has just been dealt a blow. That intimation of the worst
had found a niche all ready for it in his mind ; what he had read
in Philip’s eyes had done no more than raise a tacit embargo,
set free a thought that had been lurking, full-formed, for many
a month in the secret places of his consciousness.
At the corner of the Rue de I’Universite, some steps from his
house, a sudden apprehension gripped him, a panic fear of the
solitude awaiting him at home. He hesitated, on the brink of
flight. Unthinkingly he had lifted his eyes toward the lurid sky,
while searching his mind for someone with whom he could take
refuge, someone to bestow the solace of a pitying glance.
Then, ‘No one . . . !’ he murmured.
For several minutes he remained thus, leaning against a wall,
while the boom of guns, the drone of aeroplanes, crashes of
bursting bombs, beat on his weary brain — pondering on the
inexplicable fact that he had not a friend on earth. Yet he
had always been sociable, obliging; he had won the liking
of his patients ; been popular with fellow-students and appre-
ciated by his teachers. More, there had been women in his life
who had loved him passionately. And yet he had not a friend,
had never had one. Not even Jacques. . . . ‘Jacques died
before I’d learned to make a friend of him.’
Suddenly his thoughts turned towards Rachel. How good it
would have been to have her now with him, in this black hour,
and to hear, close in his ears, her voice tender and soft as a
caress, whispering, ‘My Toine . . . my darling!’ Where was
968
EPILOGUE
she? What had become of her? The necklace ... he had it at
home. A desire came over him to fondle it between his palms
and feel the honey-golden beads grow warm, like living flesh,
under his touch, and, drinking in their fragrance, dream she
was nestling in his arms.
With an effort he drew away from the wall and stumblingly
covered the few yards between it and his door.
A BATCH OF LETTERS
A Batch of Letters
May i6th, 1918 Maisons.
The shell which smashed my leg did more ; it made of
me — a sexless being. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you this
when you were here. But, being a doctor, you may have guessed
it. When we were talking about Jacques and I told you 1 envied
his lot, you looked at me in a curious way.
Please burn this letter; I don’t want anyone to know, and
I’d loathe being pitied. I’ve saved my skin, and my pension
gives me enough to live on; many would say I’m one of the
lucky ones, and I daresay they’d be right. So long as Mother
lives. I’ll stick it out ; but if, later on, I decide to disappear, you
will know why, and you’ll be the only one to know it.
Always yours,
D. F.
May 2yd Maisons-Laffitte.
Dear Antoine,
This isn’t a reproach, but we arc getting rather anxious ;
you promised to write, and a whole week has gone by without
a line from you. I cannot help fearing the long railway journey
may have proved more trying than we expected.
I would like to tell you all that your visit and our talks
together meant to me. But I don’t know how to say that sort
of thing — just as I cannot show my feelings at such moments.
So I’ll say only this : since you left it seems to me that I am
lonelier than ever.
Very affectionately yours,
Jenny.
Saturday, June Sth, 1918 Maisons-Laffitte.
Dear Antoine,
The days are passing, three weeks have gone by since
you left Maisons — and still not a line from you. I am beginning
973
SUMMER, 1914
to be seriously alarmed; I can attribute this long silence only
to the state of your health ; do please write and tell me exactly
how things stand.
Little Paul has had an attack of tonsillitis with high fever for
several days ; he is getting better but has still to stay in bed —
which rather complicates life at the Hostel. Just imagine, every-f
one here says he has grown much taller during the week in
bed! That’s hardly possible, is it? I have an impression, too,
that his intelligence has developed during his short illness. He
makes up all sorts of stories to explain the pictures in his picture-
books and the sketches Daniel makes for him. Please don’t
laugh — I wouldn’t dare to say it to anyone else — but I really
think Paul is exceptionally observant for a child of his age and
that he will be very intelligent later on.
Otherwise we’ve no news. Orders have been sent to the
hospital to evacuate as many convalescents as possible to make
room for new-comers, and we have had to send away a number
of poor fellows who had been reckoning on another ten days’ or
a fortnight’s peace and quiet. New cases are pouring in daily ;
Mamma has got the English people who own the little house
next door — the one with the wistaria on the porch — to lend it
to her. That means another twenty beds, perhaps more. Nicole
has had a letter from her husband ; his motor-ambulance unit
has left Champagne and been transferred to the Belfort sector.
He says that our losses on the Champagne front were simply
appalling. How long will it go on? Will this nightmare never
end? Some friends of ours at Maisons who go to Paris daily
say that the repeated bombardments are beginning to tell on
the morale of the population.
Dear Antoine, even if your news is of a serious relapse, do
please tell me the truth, and don’t leave us any longer in this
dreadful uncertainty.
Your friend,
Jenny.
II. 6. 18 Grasse.
State of health unsatisfactory, but so far no definite
aggravation. Will write in a few days. Affectionately, Thibault.
974
A BATCH OF LETTERS
Le Mousquier.
1 8 . vi. 1 8
At last, my dear Jenny, I bring myself to write to you.
You were right in fearing the long journey had been too much
for me. No sooner was I back than I had a rather serious
relapse, with alarming fluctuations of temperature. New and
drastic methods of treatment seem to have staved off" the pro-
gress of the disease once more. For the last week I’ve been up
and about again, and gradually getting back to my old way of
life.
But my silence was not due to this relapse. You ask me to
tell you the truth. Here it is. Something has happened to me,
something terrible and unforeseen; I’ve learnt, I’ve realized,
that my case is hopeless. Definitely hopeless. I shall probably
linger on a few months more. But, whatever is done, I cannot
possibly recover.
One has to have been through the mill to realize what that
means. And, faced with such a certitude, one feels the whole
world crumbling under one’s feet.
Forgive me for having told you this so bluntly. But when a
man knows he is going to die, everything else becomes so
trivial, so . . . irrelevant.
Not up to writing any more to-day. Will write again soon.
Affectionately yours,
Antoine.
P.S. — Would you please keep this news strictly to yourself
Le Mousquier.
22 . vi. i8
No, my dear Jenny, it is not as you think (or pretend to
think) ; what I am up against is not a sick man’s fancy. I should
have given more details — but I did not feel up to it. To-day
I’ll try to be more explicit.
What I am facing is something very real; a certainty. It
forced itself upon me the day I left you, the last day I spent in
Paris, in the course of a visit to my old teacher, Dr. Philip. I
975
SUMMER, 1914
suppose it was his presence that led me suddenly to look at
my case, for the first time, from a strictly professional view-
point, and to make an impartial, logical diagnosis, as I would
have done for a patient. And then, like a lightning-flash, the
truth forced itself upon me.
During my railway journey I had only too much time to
review my case. I had with me the daily notes I have been
making from the start, and they enabled me to trace day by
day, through its recurrent ups and downs, the steady worsening
of my condition. I also had with me the digest I compiled last
winter of almost all the clinical observations and case-reports,
French and English, that have appeared in technical reviews
since gas was first used in warfare. I knew it all already, but
suddenly I saw things in a new light. Everything pointed to the
same conclusion. Once I was back here I discussed my case
with the specialists who are treating it. Not, as formerly, from
the standpoint of a patient who thinks himself on the way to
recovery and snatches at every favourable symptom, but as a
competent, well-informed colleague who is no longer to be
fobbed off with kindly lies. It did not take me long to corner
them; I very soon had them shirking direct answers, making
partial admissions, or relapsing into a silence which told me
more than words.
My prognosis, now, is solidly established. Given the progress
of the toxaemia during the past ten months, and the mischief
it has done, I have no longer any chance, none whatever, of
recovery. Not even of staying in an intermediate, chronic state
which would keep me an invalid for the rest of my days. No,
I’m like a ball set rolling down a hill, that can’t help rolling
quicker and quicker, till it reaches the bottom. Isn’t it absurd
that I, a doctor, should have humbugged myself like that, and
for so long ! I can’t fix a time-limit — that depends on the future
attacks (there’s no preventing them) and their severity ; and on
my periods of respite. This business of dying by degrees may
last from two months to, at the most, a year ; it is a matter of
chance, according to my relapses and the temporary relief I
get from different treatments. But it will all come to the same
thing in the end; and the end is near. In some cases there
976
A BATCH OF LETTERS
exists a hope of what you’d call a miracle ; in my case, none.
At its present stage of development, the science of medicine is
unable to do anything for me. Please understand that I am not
writing this as an invalid who puts his chances at their blackest
in the hope of provoking a comforting rejoinder; no, I am
writing as a clinician who knows his subject and has detected
a malady definitely recognized as fatal. If I can write in this
calm, detached manner, it is because . . .
June '2'^rd . — I resume this letter at the pK)int where I broke off
yesterday. I haven’t yet got myself sufficiently in hand to keep
my attention fixed on anything over a long period. I cannot
remember how I meant to end that phrase. I wrote ‘calm,
detached.’ That relative calmness in the face of the inevitable —
a far from stable calm, unfortunately — has come to me only
after a phase of appalling mental agony.
Day after day, night after night — sleepless, interminable
nights — I lived in an abyss of horror, endured the torments of
the damned. Even to think of it now makes me break out in a
cold sweat, sends shudders down my spine. Nobody can imagine
what it’s like. How does one manage to keep one’s reason?
And how, by what mysterious processes, does one succeed in
forcing one’s way through that tempest of revolt and anguish,
and reaching the state of resignation I have now? Explanation
is beyond me. It would seem that once a fact is proved, a
rationalist mind cannot but yield to it, unconditionally. And it
seems, too, that the capacity of human nature for adapting
itself to circumstance must be prodigious, to enable a man to
get used even to the idea that he is going to be done out of life
before he has had time to live; doomed to vanish from the
earth before he has realized a tithe of the vast possibilities that
he believed were his.
But I cannot now recall the various stages of this change that
gradually came over me. It was a long process. Presumably
the paroxysms of utter despair alternated with phases of
prostration ; otherwise they would have been unbearable. This
transition period covered several weeks, during which physical
pain and the worries of looking after my health were the only
things that took my mind off the other, the real suffering. Little
977
SUMMER, 1914
by little the stranglehold relaxed. There was nothing stoical,
heroic, or in the least like resignation, in my new state of mind.
It was rather that my capacity of feeling had been worn out,
bringing on an enfeeblement of my responses, a growing in-
difference or, more precisely, anaesthesia. My reason played
no part in this. Nor did my will. The only use to which I’ve
put my will has been (during these last few days) to try to
prolong this state of apathy. Just now I am doing all I can to
pick up, one by one, the broken threads of normal life. I am
renewing contact with the people around me. I force myself to
have my meals with the others ; I keep out of my bedroom as
much as possible. To-day for quite a while I watched some of
the men here playing bridge. And this afternoon I find 1 can
write to you without too much effort. With, indeed, a new and
curious zest. I’ve come out of doors to finish this letter and am
sitting in the shade of a row of cypress-trees, behind which the
hospital orderlies are at their usual Sunday game of bowls. I
had imagined that their proximity, the noise they make —
laughing, squabbling etc. — would be too much for me. But I
made up my mind to stick it out, and I’ve succeeded. So, you
see, I am on the way (apparently) to a-new mental equilibrium.
All the same, I admit these efforts have exhausted me a bit.
I’ll write to you again. As far as my mind is capable of being
interested in others, all my thoughts are for you, and your
little son.
Antoine.
Le Mousquier.
28. vi. 18
I’ve read your letter several times this morning, my dear
Jenny. It’s not merely simple and delightful. It is exactly as I
would have wished it. As I would have wished to be; as I
had always felt you were. I have waited till night came, till
all was silence in the hospital, to write to you. At this hour
the ‘treatments’ are over, the night orderly has done his last
round, and one is alone — alone with the prospect of another
sleepless night, alone with one’s ghosts. . . . Thanks to you I
978
A BATCH OF LETTERS
feel I have more — I was going to write ‘courage.’ But courage
isn’t what I mean, nor do 1 need it. What 1 need, perhaps, is
a presence at my side ; I need to feel less utterly alone in these
long months of mental stock-taking that seemingly lie ahead.
And, strange as it may sound, I can face them now without
wishing them a day shorter. I’m surprised at myself. As you
may guess, the means of putting an end to it are always at my
disposal — but I am reserving that for later on. For the present,
I accept the respite; indeed I cling to it. Qjueer, isn’t it? The
truth is, I suppose, that when a man has been so passionately
in love with life as 1 was, it’s hard for him to break with it —
and especially so when he feels life slipping through his fingers.
In a tree struck by lightning, the sap goes on rising for several
successive springs, the roots take years to die.
But, Jenny, there was one thing I missed in that delightful
letter : news of your little one. You have only mentioned him
once, in a previous letter. When I got it I was still in a state
of such utter despondency and indifference to everything that
I left it unopened for a day or more. When I did open it my
eyes fell on the lines where you talked of Paul, and for the first
time I managed, for a moment, to shake off my obsession, to
break the vicious circle of my thoughts and direct my interest
to something outside myself — to regain contact with the world
of men. And since then Paul has been often in my mind. At
Maisons I saw him, touched him, heard him laugh — I can still
feel his little muscles throbbing under my fingers. I need only
think of him, to conjure up his presence. And round him
certain notions are crystallizing, plans for the future. It’s
curious, the craving a man feels, even when a sentence of death
has been passed on him, to make plans, and to foster hopes. I
need only remind myself that this child exists, stands on the
threshold of to-morrow, with a brand-new life before him — and
suddenly all sorts of vistas, forbidden ground to me, open up
before my eyes. A sick man’s fancies, perhaps. No matter;
nowadays I’ve less aversion than I used to have, for ‘senti-
mentalizing.’ (That, assuredly, is an effect of illness !) I sleep
so little. And I don’t want to have recourse to drugs yet awhile;
I shall need them only too sorely, later on.
979
SUMMER, 1914
I am pursuing systematically my efforts to re-adapt myself.
They involve a training of the will, which in itself is beneficial.
I have started reading the newspapers again. The war news;
von Kuhlmann’s speech in the Reichstag. He says — very
properly, to my mind — that peace will never be feasible between
people who persist in regarding every proposal made by the
enemy as a ‘trap,’ an attempt to undermine ‘morale.’ Once
again the allied Press is giving public opinion a wrong lead.
The speech is not a bit ‘aggressive’ ; quite otherwise, it’s concili-
atory — and significant.
(There was touch of affectation in that comment on the war.
It’s true that my interest in the war has not quite petered out,
and I suppose I shall go on having it, up to the end. All the
same I had to force myself somewhat to write those lines.)
Here I stop. It has done me good, this little ‘talk’ with you,
and I shall resume it very soon. We shall never have known
each other very well, Jenny, but your letter has been a great
comfort and I’ve a feeling you are my only friend in all the
world.
Antoine.
Le Mousquier.
30. vi. 18
I am going to give you a surprise, my dear Jenny. Guess
how I employed my afternoon, yesterday ! In looking through
old papers, making up accounts, and writing business letters.
For some days past I’d had it on my mind. A sort of itch to
square up certain material problems, and be able to tell myself
I was leaving my house in order when the time came to quit
it. Quite soon I’ll be incapable of efforts of that kind. So it
seemed best to take advantage of the fleeting interest I still can
muster up in such matters.
Please forgive the business-like tone of this letter. But, since
all I possess will go to Paul, it’s obviously up to me to let his
mother know exactly how 1 stand financially.
I have not much to leave. Nothing, I expect, will remain of
the investments my father left me. The alterations to my Paris
980
A BATCH OF LETTERS
house made a large inroad on them, and I was rzish enough to
transfer what remained into Russian Stock, which is most
unlikely ever to recover. 1 count myself lucky to have saved
from the wreck my home in the Rue de TUniversite and the
house at Maisons-Laffitte.
As for the former, it can be let or sold. In either case it should
provide enough for you to live on in a simple way and give
our little one a decent education. It won’t mean luxury for
him, and so much the better. But he will not suffer, either,
from the soul-deadening constraints of poverty.
As for the Maisons house, I advise you to sell it after the war.
It may tempt the fancy of some nouveau riche, and it deserves
no better fate. I gathered from Daniel that your mother’s house
is heavily mortgaged. I have always had an impression that your
mother and you, too, were greatly attached to it. It might be a
good idea to devote the money raised by selling the Thibault
house to paying off the mortgage. Thus your parents’ country
place would in effect belong to Paul. I will consult my lawyer
as to the ways and means of arranging this.
As soon as I have a rough estimate of my estate I will fix the
amount of the little annuity I want to provide for Gise. I’m
afraid, my poor Jenny, that all the bother of administering these
funds will fall on you, till your son comes of age. I think you
will find Beynaud, my lawyer, a help; he is a worthy man,
rather timid and a stickler for formalities, but trustworthy and,
on the whole, a sound adviser.
Well, that is what I set out to write to you. It’s a relief to
have done with it. 1 shall not refer to the subject again until I
am in a position to give you the final details. But for some days
another plan has been hovering at the back of my mind, and
it concerns you personally. The trouble is — it’s of an extremely
delicate order. I don’t feel up to writing about it now, but one
day 1 shall have to.
I have just spent a couple of hours under the olive-trees,
reading the papers. What is brewing, I wonder, behind the
present lull in the activity of the German armies? Our stand
between Montdidier and the Oise seems to have checked their
advance. And the ill-success of the Austrians must have been a
981
SUMMER, 1914
facer for their High Command. If the Central Powers fail to
bring off some decisive victories in the course of the summer
before the American army takes the field, a definite turn of the
tide will follow, I imagine. But shall I still be here to see it?
The appalling slowness (from the individual’s viewpoint) of the
events that make history is something which has often been
brought home to me during the last four years. And when a
man has only a short time to live, he notices it even more.
However I must admit that I seem just now to be in for a
spell of better health. Is it the effect of the new injections? My
choking-fits are less painful and the bouts of fever less frequent.
So much for my physical state. As for my ‘morale’ — to employ
the time-honoured expression used by the High Command to
appraise the passivity of the troops sent to their death — it, too,
has improved. You may have noticed it in the general tone of
this letter. Its length, anyhow, shows the pleasure I have in
these little ‘talks’ with you. My only pleasure. But I must cut
it short. I’m due now for a ‘treatment.’
Your friend,
A.
P.S. — I submit to this ‘treatment’ as conscientiously as ever.
Queer, isn’t it? There has been a curious change in the doctor’s
attitude towards me. Just now, for instance, though he certainly
detects an improvement, he no longer dares to call my attention
to it, and he spares me remarks beginning, ‘There you are ! I
told you so !’ and so forth. But he comes to see me often er,
brings me newspapers and gramophone records, and does all
sorts of little friendly services. . . . That is by way of answer
to your question. This place suits me quite as well as any — for
waiting for the end.
No. 23 Hospital,
June 29/A, 1918 Royan.
Dear Dr. Thibault,
1 left French Guinea in the autumn of 1916 and your
favour of May 30th has only just reached me here, where 1 am
working as a nurse in the Surgical Ward. Yes, I remember
982
A BATCH OF LETTERS
sending off the parcel you speak of, but it was so long ago
that I fear I cannot give you much in the way of informa-
tion, I had very little dealings with the lady who asked me to
post the parcel to you. She was brought to the hospital in a very
bad way, with an attack of yellow fever that carried her off
after a few days, though Dr. Lancelot did his best for her. It
was in the spring of 1916 I think. I remember that she had been
put on shore from a mail steamer calling in at Konakri. One
night when I was on night duty she gave me the article and
your address; it was during one of the short spells when she
had her wits, for she was delirious most of the time. I am
quite sure though that she did not ask me to write anything to
you. She must have been travelling by herself when the boat
called in as no one came to see her during the two or three
days she lay dying. I think she was buried in a pauper’s grave
in the European Cemetery. You might write to the House
Physician, Dr. Fabre; if he is still there, he could look up the
register and give you the lady’s name and date of decease. I
am so sorry not to remember more, please excuse me.
Very truly yours,
Lucie Bonnet.
P.S. — I have just remembered something and open my letter
to tell you about it. I am almost sure it was that lady that had
with her a big black bulldog she called Hurt or Hirsh or some
such name. She asked for it each time she recovered con-
sciousness, but we couldn’t have it in the wards because it’s
against the rules and anyhow it was always biting people. One
of the other nurses wanted to adopt it, but it gave her no end
of trouble and in the end she had to have it shot.
983
ANTOINE’S DIARY
Antoine’s Diary
July 2 nd, 1918. — Had a dream of Jacques just now, when I’d
dozed off, in the small hours. Already it’s gone blurred; im-
possible to piece it together again. But I know the scene was
the little ground-floor flat where Jacques and I lived together
in the old days. One memory stands out especially: the day
Jacques joined me there, after leaving the reformatory. It was
I myself who arranged for him to come to me, so as to get
him out of Father’s clutches. But I couldn’t repress a rather
ugly, selfish feeling of annoyance at his coming. I remember
quite well saying to myself: ‘He can live here, that’s settled,
but I won’t have him interfering with my programme of work,
messing up my career.’ My career ! All my life long I’ve been
obsessed by that idea; it was my watchword during fifteen
strenuous years. To-day, for Antoine Thibault lying in this bed,
what irony is in that word ‘career !’
Yesterday I got the Hospital Clerk to buy me this note-
book at the local stationer’s. An invalid’s whim, perhaps,
keeping a diary under these conditions. Still, something to be
said for it. Have noticed each time I wrote to Jenny the relief
I found in writing down my thoughts, ‘getting it off my chest.’
Never kept a diary before; not even when I was sixteen and
so many of my school-fellows, Fred, Gebron, and the rest, were
fervent diarists. A bit late to start ! But this isn’t to be a regular
diary ; I shall merely jot down, when I feel like it, the ideas
simmering in my brain. Sound, from a medical point of view,
undoubtedly. Every thought tends to grow into an obsession
in the brain of an invalid, or a man suffering from insomnia.
Writing it purges it away. Also it’s a diversion, helps to kill
time. (To think that I who always used to find the time avail-
able too short for all I had to do, should talk now of ‘killing’
it ! Even at the front, even last winter in hospital, I lived at
high pressure, oblivious to the lapse of time. It’s only since my
days are numbered that the hours have grown interminable.)
987
SUMMER, 1914
A fairish night. Temp, this morning; 99.8.
Evening . — The fits of oppression have come back. Temp. :
101.8. Intercostal pains. Pleural complications setting in?
Let’s lay my ‘ghosts,’ by getting them down on paper.
Haunted all day by this business of making my will. Must
organize my death. (Curious this mania I still have for planning !
But this time it’s not on my own behalf; it’s for them, for little
Paul.) Must have worked through the figures ten or a dozen
times : sale of the Maisons property, a lease of my house in the
Rue de I’Universite, sale of my laboratory equipment. Might
be possible to get a chemical manufacturer to take the place
on a long lease. Studler could scout round for one. Otherwise
must have the apparatus taken down and sold off.
Studler — mustn’t forget him; after the war he’ll be out of
a job, practically penniless, poor fellow. Will leave instructions
for him and Jousselin, explaining how to deal with the case-
histories and records of experiments. (Present them to the
Library of the Faculty?)
July 2 yd . — Lucas has shown me the results of the blood-test.
Thoroughly bad. Even Bardot could not help admitting, in
that drawling voice of his : ‘Not too good.’ My fine healthy
blood of former years ! How confident I felt, when recovering
from my first wound, in my physical fitness ; how proud of the
quality of my blood when I saw how quickly the wound was
healing! . . .Jacques, too. Our Thibault blood.
Put it straight to Bardot about the pleural complications.
‘An abscess — that would be the last straw, eh?’ He shrugged
derisively, but gave me a thorough look-over. Nothing to fear
on that score was his verdict.
Thibault blood ! Paul has it ; my healthy blood of early days,
our birthright, is flowing still — in the little chap’s veins.
During the war never once did I acquiesce in dying, never
even for ten seconds did I mentally give up my life. And now,
too, I refuse to relinquish it. Of course I can’t hoodwink myself
any longer, I have to recognize and face the irremediable ; but
I won’t agree to it, I won’t play the meek, consenting victim.
Afternoon . — I know well what Reason, not to say my sense
988
Antoine’s diary
of dignity, would urge ; somehow to regain my faculty of looking
on the outside world and its incessant flux objectively. Not
through the distorting medium of my personality, across the
shadow of death. To remind myself that I am but a tiny frag-
ment of the universal Whole. And damaged goods at that!
What matter? What is this tiny T’ in comparison with the rest,
that will continue after me !
Tiny, yes ; but how all-important I used to think it !
Still — it’s worth trying.
A golden rule : Never let yourself be hypnotized by the
individual.
July /^th . — A nice letter from Jenny this morning. Charming
details about her son. (Couldn’t help reading out bits to Goiran,
who is crazy about his two kids.) Must get Jenny to have him
photographed. Another thing I must do; that’s write to her
the Letter (with a capital Li). A difficult job. Better wait till
I’ve had a good night’s rest before tackling it.
What a miracle it is — there’s no other word for it — the coming
of this child at the precise moment when the two families from
which he springs were on the point of dying out, without having
given anything worthwhile to the world 1 I wonder what
elements of his heredity on the maternal side he has in him.
The best, I hope. But one thing I know for certain, even at this
stage: he is truly of our blood. Strong-willed, intelligent, un-
compromising. Jacques’ son. A Thibault I Have ruminated all
day on that theme. That seemingly haphazard uprush of the
sap which at a given point has produced a new branch on the old
Thibault stem. Is it mere nonsense to surmise that something
lies behind it, that it corresponds to some creative plan? Family
pride, perhaps. Still, why shouldn’t this child be the one pre-
destined from all time, that fine flower of the Thibault species
which our family has been trying to produce, generation after
generation? The masterpiece which Nature owed it to herself
to achieve, sooner or later, and of which my father, my brother
and myself were mere rough drafts? And why should not the
dynamism, the latent energy, that was in us before him not
find an outlet this time in a genuinely creative impulse?
989
SUMMER, 1914
Midnight. — Insomnia. Phantoms to be ‘exorcised.’
For a month and a half, seven grim weeks, I’ve known I was
a hopeless case. How familiar, those words I have just written,
‘a hopeless case,’ and everyone fancies he understands them !
But nobody except a man condemned to death knows what
they really mean. And that knowledge comes in a flash of reve-
lation, driving all before it, leaving one dazed, an empty shell.
Yet as a doctor, living in constant touch with death, I should
have known. With death? With others’ deaths. Have often tried
to trace the causes of that physical impossibility of envisaging
my own death. Due, perhaps, to some special quality of my
life-instinct (a thought that comes to me to-night for the first
time).
That vitality I used to have, the zest I brought to everything
I did, keeping the ball of action rolling, so to speak, I attribute
largely to the craving I had to perpetuate myself by creative
acts ; to ‘survive.’ An instinctive dread of disappearing. (Fairly
common, that, no doubt. But in very different degrees.) In
my case an hereditary trait. Have been thinking a lot about
Father. He was haunted by a desire to attach his name to all
sorts of things : his charitable societies, prizes for moral excel-
lence, that huge institution of his at Crouy. A desire he realized
by having his name blazoned on the facade of the reformatory
— The Oscar Thibault Foundation. Significant, too, was his wish
to impose his Christian name (the only strictly personal part
of his designation), hyphenated, on his descendants; and that
mania he had for flaunting his initials everywhere, on his
crockery, on the garden gate, even on the backs of his leather
chairs. There was much more to it than the proprietary instinct
(or, as I used to think, mere ostentation). It was something
finer — a craving to leave some trace behind him, not to be
utterly blotted out by death. (Evidently the Christian after-life
he looked for was not enough.) And I’ve inherited from him
that craving. I, too, have a secret hope of associating my name
with something that will outlast me ; a discovery, for instance.
The moral : No man can escape his father !
Seven weeks, fifty days and fifty nights, facing a certainty,
without a fleeting doubt or glimmer of illusion. And yet (this
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is what I want to put on record) curiously enough I find that
there are respites from obsession ; brief spells, not of forgetting,
but when the fixed idea retreats. It sometimes happens — oftener
as the days go by — that I have periods of from two or three
to (at most) fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the cer-
tainty of dying before the year is out ceases to hold the fore-
ground and sinks into relative quiescence. During these periods
I suddenly find myself capable of doing things, of reading
attentively, of writing, listening, joining in discussions — in a
word of taking an interest in matters not concerned with my
health, much as if I had shaken off my obsession. And yet
it is never absent, I am always conscious of it lurking on the
threshold, biding its time. Even in my sleep I somehow feel
that it’s there, in ambush.
July 6th . — Have felt better, ever since Thursday. The moment
I suffer less, the world seems an almost cheerful place. Reading
in the morning papers an account of the Italian successes in
the Piave valley, I had a sensation that I’d quite forgotten — a
little thrill of pleasure. A hopeful sign.
Wrote nothing yesterday. Discovered, when I was out of
doors, that I’d left my diary in my room. Too lazy to go up-
stairs for it, but all the afternoon I hankered after it. So it’s
beginning to grow on me, this diary-keeping itch !
Not much time for ‘diarizing’ to-day, however. Too many
clinical observations to write up in the black note-book. Since
buying the diary I seem to have gone rather slack about my
case-history. Too scrappy, the notes I’ve been writing in it
lately. Still it’s the case-history that really matters, and it must
come first. Must make a clean-cut separation: the diary for
my ‘ghosts,’ the note-book for everything relating to my health
— temperatures, treatments, effects of remedies, secondary
reactions, progress of toxaemia, discussions with Bardot and
Mazet, etc. Without wanting to set too high a value on them,
I firmly believe that these daily notes, recorded from the start
by a gas victim who is also a doctor, will comprise a set of
clinical observations that in the present state of medical know-
ledge may be of very great service. Especially if I go on with
99 *
SUMMER, 1914
it Up to the end. Bardot has promised to see that it is published
in the Medical Journal.
Yesterday fat Delahaye left. On convalescent leave. Thinks
he’s definitely cured. (And may be, for all I know.) He came
upstairs to say good-bye. Pretended to be in the devil of a
hurry ; obviously ill at ease. Didn’t say, ‘See you again one of
these days,’ or anything like that. Which Joseph, who was tidy-
ing the room, must have noticed, for he turned to me the moment
the door closed behind D., and said, ‘There, sir, you see some
folk get over it !’
Just now I almost wrote: ‘If I am still alive it’s for the sake
of my case-history.’ I should clear up the question of suicide.
And admit, belatedly, that the case-history has never been
anything but a pretext. The way one throws dust in one’s own
eyes ! Curious how I hate admitting to myself that I’ve never
really wanted to end my life. No, not even in my blackest hours.
If I’d really meant make the plunge, I’d have done so at Paris
the morning when I bought the ampules. It crossed my mind
again just before I took the train ; and it was that morning that
I began bamboozling myself with this idea of a case-history.
Pretending I had a last duty to perform before the end, a ‘major
work’ to complete. As if the importance I set on these clinical
notes could have possibly outweighed, frustrated the tempta-
tion! Cowardice? No, I swear it wasn’t that. Had the tempta-
tion been a real one, it isn’t fear would have restrained me.
What was lacking was not courage, but the desire. The truth
is that I merely dallied with the idea of suicide. And had no
trouble in brushing it aside when I’d had enough of it. Only
too glad of the excuse of the case-history to keep up — and
calling it ‘strength of mind I’
And yet — unless I die suddenly, and there’s no likelihood of
that, worse luck ! — I know I shall not wait for a natural end.
(No make-believe about that, I’m positive 1) Yes, the time to
act will come, that’s certain; I’ve only to let it come. I have
the stuff ready ; nothing could be easier. A consoling thought,
when all is said and done.
Later . — ^When we were on the verandah before lunch Goiran
produced a Swiss paper giving a full report of Wilson’s latest
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speech. He read it out aloud — one could tell that he was deeply
moved, as indeed we all were. Each of Wilson’s ‘messages’ is
like a gust of fresh, pure air sweeping Europe. Makes one think
of the oxygen they pump in after a colliery explosion, so that
the poor devils buried in the pit can stave off suffocation, till
rescue comes.
July "^th. 5 a.m . — The fixed idea. Like a brick wall against
which I run my head perpetually. I rise to my feet, charge at
it once more, stagger — and start again. Sometimes (but without
believing it for a moment) I try to persuade myself it isn’t true,
that I’ve still the ghost of a chance. Only to give myself a
pretext for mustering afresh the host of arguments which always,
inevitably, launch me once more at the brick wall.
Afternoon, out of doors . — Read Wilson’s message again. Much
more explicit than previous ones. It defines his ideas as to the
terms of peace, lays down the conditions which are essential
if the settlement is to be ‘definitive.’ A nobly inspiring pro-
gramme: (i) The suppression of all political systems likely to
bring about new wars; (2) Before any change of frontier or
annexation, the opinion of the population involved to be taken ;
(3) All nations to subscribe to a Code of International Law
and to bind themselves to abide by its terms; (4) The estab-
lishment of an international committee acting as a Court of
Arbitration, on which all the nations of the civilized world,
without discrimination, shall be represented.
(I enjoyed writing the above, setting it down in black and
white ! Had the impression of endorsing it, lending a hand. . . .
Childish, perhaps, but how satisfying !)
Everyone here is talking about Wilson’s peace plans. Gleams
of hope on every face. And how thrilling to think that in all
the cities of Europe and America people are feeling the same
way! And to picture the excitement in every dug-out on the
front lines, in every rest-camp, over that message 1 All of them
on both sides so sick of slaughtering each other for four dreary
years. (Four years? They’ve been at it for centuries, egged on
by their rulers.) The world was waiting for that appeal to
reason. Will the powers-that-be pay heed todt? Let’s hope that,
993
KK
SUMMER, 1914
this time, the good seed will strike root in every land. What
Wilson’s aiming at is so clear, so sensible, so well in keeping
with man’s truest instincts, with the trend of human progress.
Of course all sorts of difficulties will crop up when it comes
to carrying out his plan, it may mean years of uphill going.
But how can one doubt that this is the one and only path that
must be followed, hard though it be, by the world of to-morrow?
Four years of warfare have brought nothing but wholesale
slaughter, disaster everywhere. Surely the most fervent addicts
of the ‘fruits of victory’ are forced to own to-day that modern
war — however you look at it, from a national or an individual
standpoint — spells unmitigated ruin, without any hope of com-
pensating gain. That being so, once the futility of war, on
every count, has been proved by experience, and, once we find
that the conclusions of political and economic experts bear out
the instinctive belief the masses have in pacifism — what earthly
obstacle can there be to the organization of perpetual peace?
After lunch, a choking fit. Had an injection. Then lay down
on a long chair under the olives. Too fagged to write the letter
to Jenny, though I’m very anxious to get it off my mind.
Listened to a discussion between Goiran, Bardot and Mazet
— about Wilson’s governing idea, a committee of international
arbitration. No one stands to lose by it; rather, every nation
stands to gain. Another point which is not stressed as it should
be is that the procedure of this Supreme Court would humour
the national susceptibilities and self-esteem which have given
rise to so many wars. However apt to take offence over ques-
tions of prestige a nation, a government or even a monarch
may be, each would feel less humiliated at having to bow to
the verdict of an International Court that bases its decisions
on the collective interests of all nations, than at having to yield
to a neighbour’s threats or the pressure of a hostile coalition.
Goiran observed that this Tribunal should be constituted the
moment hostilities cease, and before the loser nation is called
to account. Thus it would be possible to discuss the peace terms
not in an acrimonious spirit, as between enemies, but calmly,
under the auspices of a League of all Nations, which would
take a wide view of the controversy, deal impartially with
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Antoine’s diary
questions of war guilt, and pronounce an equitable judgement.
A League of Nations . — The only certain way of making future
wars impossible. For no sooner would a nation be attacked or
threatened by another than automatically all the other nations
would join in against the aggressor, paralyse his activities, and
force him to refer his claim or grievances to arbitration. And,
taking a still longer view, one may expect the League of Nations
to revise the economic systems of the world on international
lines and organize a planned co-operation of all peoples, truly
world-wide at last. And thus human progress would enter on
a new, decisive phase.
Goiran made a lot of very sensible remarks on the subject.
I used to take rather too harsh a view of Goiran; the truth is
that his air of knowing everything used to get on my nerves.
He never lets one forget his academic qualifications. Even his
tone of voice is that of the history professor he is in civil life,
lecturing his pupils. But it’s a fact, he really does know a great
many things. And follows the march of events with a discerning
eye. He reads eight or ten dailies and gets a bundle of Swiss
newspapers and magazines regularly each week. A well-
balanced mind in short — and I’ve always had a weakness for
such mentalities. The effort he makes to take a long view of
this war and judge it from the historian’s standpoint, is most
refreshing. Voisenet, too, was present. (Bardot once said to
me: Goiran and Voisenet are the only men here who have
their vocal cords almost intact — and they never let one for-
getit!)
Not too bad a day. Should say this relative well-being is due
quite as much to Wilson as to the injection.
A postscript to the above remarks. The institution of a League
of Nations might well cause something absolutely new to spring
from the ruins this war will leave behind : a world conscience.
By grace of which humanity may make a decisive stride towards
an era of liberty and justice.
II p.m . — Skimmed the newspapers. Hollow verbiage, dis-
gusting pettiness. Really Wilson seems the only statesman
capable to-day of taking a wide view. The democratic ideal,
at its noblest. Beside him our French, and British, demagogues
995
SUMMER, 1914
Strike one as the merest pettifoggers. All of them are carrying
on, more or less, the selfsame imperialist traditions which they
affect to damn in the enemy countries.
Talked to Voisenet and Goiran about America. Voisenet has
lived some years in New York. He made us understand the
stability, and security, of the United States. Goiran in great
form. Waxing prophetic, he predicted that in the twenty-first
century Europe will be invaded by the yellow races ; the future
of the whites will be restricted to the American continent.
2 a.m. — Insomnia. Dozed off for some minutes, during which
I dreamt of Studler. In the back lab. at Paris. The Caliph
had a surgeon’s coat on, plus a forage-cap; his beard was
cut shorter. I’d been enthusing to him about something : Wilson,
probably, and the League. He looked round at me over his
shoulder, with his big, moony eyes. ‘How the hell does that
concern Thibault? You’ll be dead by then.’
Still thinking about Wilson (the Caliph notwithstanding!).
Wilson strikes me as the right man for the task before him. If
the end of this war is to be the end of war, the coming peace
must be the work of a ‘new’ man, an ‘outsider,’ who bears no
grudges; someone who has not, like’ our European statesmen,
lived four years in the thick of it, with one idea in mind — to
crush the enemy. Wilson, the man from overseas. Represen-
tative of a land that stands for brotherhood in peace and free-
dom. And he has behind him a quarter of the population of
the world. Obviously every sensible American must be saying
to himself these days; ‘If we have managed to build up and
to preserve a stable and constructive peace between our States
a century through, what’s impossible in a United States of
Europe?’ Wilson is of the lineage of men like Washington. (Of
which he’s aware. Allusions to it in his speech.) Washington
hated war, but waged it to free his country from war. Always
with the thought at the back of his mind (Goiran said this)
that by the same token he would bring freedom to the world ;
that if he succeeded in combining all those small hostile States
into a vast, pacific Federation, the Old World would be drawn
irresistibly to follow his lead. (But it’s taken us over a century
to grasp this obvious truth I)
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Antoine’s diary
As I write the clock-hands turn their sleepless round. Wilson’s
helping me to keep my ‘ghosts’ at bay !
Exciting problems, even for a man under sentence of death.
For the first time since coming back from Paris, I’m able to
take an interest in the future. The future of the world which,
when the war ends, will be cast into the melting-pot. All will
be jeopardized — and for heaven knows how long ! — if the peace
that’s coming doesn’t remould, reconstruct, and above all unify,
this stricken Europe of ours. Yes, if armed force is to go on
being the principal instrument of policy as between nations,
if each nation is to go on regarding itself as sole judge of its
conduct, and free to indulge its appetites for ‘expansion,’ as
and when it chooses, if the Federation of European States does
not bring about an economic peace, as Wilson desires, with world-
wide free trade, the suppression of customs barriers, and so
forth — in short, if the age of international anarchy isn’t cut
violently short, and the nations don’t compel their governments
to submit at last to a regime of justice equal for all and con-
sented to by all, this war will have served no purpose, all the
blood that has been shed will have been shed in vain.
But just now — there is no limit to one’s hopes. ... (I write
of this ‘better world’ that’s coming, as if I should be here to
see it !)
July 8th. — Thirty-seven to-day. My last birthday.
Waiting for the luncheon bell to ring. The washerwoman and
her daughter have just walked by under the verandah, their
bundles on their shoulders. Felt a queer emotion the other day
watching the younger woman pass, and noting how she walked,
with a slight effort and a certain stiffness at the hips. Recog-
nized the signs. Pregnant. Hardly perceptible yet ; only a vague
fullness at the waist. Three and a half months, four at most.
A poignant emotion in which mingled awe and pity, jealousy
and something of despair. For one who has none, what mystery
in that future, made visible to my eyes, almost tangible! In
that being still in limbo, with a whole uncharted life before
him ! That birth which my death will not prevent I
Out of doors . — Wilson still in everybody’s mind. For once the
997
SUMMER, 1914
bridgers have knocked off — even the C.S.M.’s ‘club’ ; they’ve
been palavering for the last two hours, their cards untouched.
The papers, too, full of comments. This morning Bardot
pointed out how significant it was that the censorship was
allowing people to foster these dreams of peace. A fine article
in a Swiss paper. The writer recalls Wilson’s message of
January, 1917. ‘Peace without victory,’ and the progressive
reduction of armaments, ending in general disarmament.
(January, 1917. Recalls to me that village where we camped,
behind Hill 304. The vaulted roof of the cellar where we messed.
Discussions about disarmament with Payen and poor Seiffert.)
Mazet came just now to tell about the test. Diminution of
the chlorates, and especially the phosphates.
Exhausting weather, thunder in the air. Dragged myself to
the Persian wheel to listen to the rippling water. I find it harder
and harder to read coherently, to fix my attention on someone
else’s thoughts. On my own, still possible. This diary is a great
stand-by. Which won’t last indefinitely. Must make the most
of it, meanwhile.
That 1917 speech of Wilson’s. Disarmament. The supreme
thing to aim at. At lunch all agreed 6n this, except Reymond.
To-day one hears people coming out with things no one’d have
dared to say, even to think, only two years ago. E.g. An army
is a cancer feeding on the nation’s vitals. (A striking metaphor,
for popular consumption; that way every workman employed
in munition factories is written down a parasite living at the
public expense.) A nation the third of whose budget is swal-
lowed up by military expenditure is heading unescapably for
bankruptcy or war. The present cataclysm is the necessary
consequence of forty years’ systematic armament. Without
general disarmament no lasting peace is feasible. A truism that’s
been enounced time after time. In vain, for an obvious reason.
It is idle to hope that governments convinced that Might pre-
vails over Right, deeply committed to an armament race, and,
what’s more, always ready to fly at each other’s throats — it’s
folly to hope such governments will ever agree amongst them-
selves to reverse steam and simultaneously return to sanity.
But all that may change in a twinkling, when peace is declared.
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For every European nation will have gone back to zero. A
clean sweep. Arsenals depleted, finances ruined by the war. A
fresh start will have to be made, on a wholly new basis. Yes,
an unprecedented, gloriously new day is breaking, the dawning
possibility of worldwide disarmament. And Wilson’s grasped
that. That idea of disarmament he has broadcast on the world
cannot but be welcomed enthusiastically by public opinion
everywhere. These four years have paved the way, fortified
men’s instinctive hatred of war, whetted their desire to see an
international moral code inaugurated that will at last replace the
duel of opposing armies in deciding conflicts between nations.
What is needed now is that the vast majority of peace-loving
men will compel the tiny minority whose interest it is to foment
wars, to bow to the will of a strong organization, capable of
imposing peace and order on the world — a League of Nations
having if needed at its disposal an international police force,
and endowed with such authority as to rule out definitely any
recourse to arms. Only let the various governments refer the
matter to a plebiscite — there can be no doubt as to the result.
It goes without saying that to-day at lunch Major Reymond
was the only one of us to wax indignant and call Wilson a
‘visionary fanatic’ completely ignorant of the realities of the
European situation. The line, in fact, that Rumelles took at
Maixim’s. Goiran stood up to him. ‘If the peace that’s coming
isn’t a genuine reconciliation and if those who make it aren’t
actuated by an ideal of justice and the desire for a united
Europe — well, that peace which millions of poor devils have
paid for with their lives will be no more than a snare and a
delusion, another arbitrary treaty that the losers, thirsting for
revenge, will tear up at the earliest opportunity.’ Reymond
retorted ; ‘It’s common knowledge what those “Holy Alliances”
amount to, and how long they last.’ Rashly I chipped in,
drawing on myself this retort (not so silly, perhaps, on second
thoughts ; and less paradoxical than it sounds) : ‘Obviously,
Thibault, a confirmed realist like you was bound to fall for
the charms of such Utopian fancies.’ (Worth thinking over that
remark.) Some drops of rain. Let’s only hope the storm will
give us a cool night.
999
SUMMER, 1914
July yd. Dawn . — A bad night. Choking fits. Not two hours’
sleep all told, and in tiny scraps.
Thought of Rachel. In these sultry nights the perfume of the
necklace is overpowering. She, too, had a stupid end, in a
hospital bed. Alone. But one’s always alone, dying.
Just had this thought: that this morning at this very hour
somewhere in the trenches thousands of wretched men are
awaiting the order to attack. Tried, cynically, to extract a grain
of comfort from it. In vain. I’m more jealous of them for being
fit enough to take their chance, than able to sympathize with
them for having to go ‘over the top.’
In the book of Kipling’s I am trying to read I lit on the
epithet ‘juvenile.’ Made me think of Jacques. It fits him so well.
He never really grew up. (Cf. medical handbooks for charac-
teristics of adolescence. He had them all: enthusiasm, a way
of rushing to extremes, pure-mindedness, temerity combined
with shyness, a taste for abstract ideas, a loathing for half-
measures, and the charm that comes of an incapacity for
scepticism.) Had he lived to maturity, would he ever have
been else than a grown-up boy?
Just read again what I wrote last night. Reymond’s remark
about ‘Utopian fancies.’ No, I’ve always fought shy — unneces-
sarily so, perhaps — of the lures of the imagination. Have always
held by the maxim (I forget where I read it) : ‘The worst
mental derangement is the habit of believing what one wishes
to be true.’ No, decidedly no ! When Wilson declares that what
he wants is a world made pure of heart, my scepticism is up
in arms. But when he goes on to talk of a world made safe for
all peace-loving nations, I’m with him every time ! I haven’t
enough illusions as to the perfectibility of human nature to
believe that any man-made world can ever become ‘pure of
heart.’ But there is nothing Utopian about a world made safe
for peace. Organized society has succeeded in getting private
persons to submit their differences to courts, instead of taking
the law into their own hands. Why should not governments
be prevented from launching nations at each other’s throats
when some difference crops up between them? War is ‘natural’
to man, they say. So is disease. Human progress has been one
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Antoine’s diary
long struggle against pernicious ‘natural’ forces. The leading
European nations have managed gradually to achieve their
national unity. Why should not that process be carried a stage
further and the continent achieve a similar unity? Another
forward step, another victory of the social instinct. ‘What about
the patriotic instinct?’ the Major would ask. But it isn’t the
natural instinct we call patriotism that causes war; it is an
acquired, artificial emotion, ‘nationalist’ passion. Affection for
one’s native soil, a patois, regional traditions, does not involve
any violent hostility towards one’s neighbours (e.g. Picardy
and Provence, Brittany and Savoy). In a European confedera-
tion the patriotic instinct would be no more than affection
for one’s ‘local habitation.’ ‘Utopian.’ That is obviously the
term with which they all will decry Wilson’s programme.
Irritating to see that even the newspapers most favourable to
it talk of him as a ‘great visionary,’ ‘the evangelist of a New
Age,’ and so forth. They’re wide of the mark, to my mind;
on the contrary, what strikes me is his common sense. His ideas
are simple, at once new and very old; a logical conclusion of
all the theories and experiments of former ages. To-morrow
Europe will stand at the cross-roads, faced by two alternatives :
either reorganization on federal lines, or a return to the old
system of periodical wars — until all nations are utterly worn
out. Supposing that, for some fantastic reason, Europe rejects
the opportunity of concluding the eminently reasonable peace
proposed by Wilson — the only lasting peace, based on entire
disarmament — she will soon discover (and at what a cost!)
that she is up once more against the old insoluble problems
and plunged again into the shambles. Happily there’s little
likelihood of that.
Evening . — A trying day. Black despair, again. Impression of
having fallen down an open manhole. I didn’t deserve this.
I deserved (pride?) the ‘fine career’ my teachers and friends
predicted for me. Then suddenly, at the corner of that trench,
the whiff of gas 1 The deathtrap set by fate.
3 a.m . — Too short of breath to sleep. Can breathe only in the
sitting position, propped up on three pillows. Have turned on
my light to take my drops ; and to write this :
KK’*'
lOOI
SUMMER, 1914
I have never had time nor the (romantic) inclination to keep
a diary. I regret it. If I could hold between my hands to-day,
in black and white, all my past life since my fifteenth year, Fd
have a better impression of having lived. My life would have
specific bulk and form — historical concreteness. It wouldn’t
be the shapeless, shadowy thing it is, vague as a half-remem-
bered dream. (In the same way the course of an illness is
recorded, and takes concrete form, on the temperature chart.)
I started this diary with the aim of laying my ‘ghosts.’ I
believed that was my motive. But there were a lot of less avowed
reasons, too, behind it; it was a pastime and a form of self-
indulgence — an attempt to salve some fragment of the life and
personality, now on the point of foundering, of which I was
so proud. To ‘salve’ — for whom; to what end? It’s absurd,
really ; for I know I shall not have time or respite to read again
what I have written. For whom is this diary then? For the child,
obviously. For Paul. . . . This flashed on me a moment ago,
through the haze of insomnia.
A fine little fellow, robust, promising grandly — with all the
future, mine, the world’s, implicit in him. .Since my first sight
of him he has never left my thoughts, and the idea that / can’t
be in his worries me preposterously. No, he will never have
known me, or anything about me; I leave next to nothing:
a few photographs, a little money, and just a name, ‘Uncle
Antoine.’ Nothing. That thought’s unbearable at times. If
during these months of reprieve I had perseverance enough to
write daily in this diary — why not? Perhaps one day, little
Paul, you will feel moved to dip into these pages and try to
find a trace of me, a vestige, the last footprints of a man who
is departing from the scene. And thus ‘Uncle Antoine’ will
come to mean to you something more than a name, a photo
in an album. I know well that this self-portrait can hardly have
much hkeness ; how changed from the man I used to be is the
bedridden invalid I am to-day! Still, it will be better than
nothing, perhaps ; I cling to this hope.
Too tired. Feverish. The night orderly saw my light. Had
him give an extra pillow. Those drops have ceased to have any
effect. Must tell Bardot to try something else.
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Antoine’s diary
A bluish glimmer on my window pane. Moonlight still? Or
daybreak already? How often after dozing off for a period I
could not determine, have I switched on the light, only to see
the clock-face leer at me, ii.io . . . 11.20 . . ., or some such
ghastly hour !
Four thirty-five now. Not the moon, then. The pale light
heralding the dawn. At last !
July 1 1 th. — The bitter, exasperating languor of these days
of vague suffering, in this bed ! Just finished lunch. Never-
ending, these meals served on a small bed-table, the spells of
waiting that exhaust one’s patience and kill what little appe-
tite one may have had. Every ten minutes, enter Joseph carry-
ing a tray with a diminutive ‘course’ on it — in a saucer ! Follows
from noon to three a lull, three empty hours, when the after-
noon borrows its silence from the night. A calm broken only
by coughs in neighbouring rooms; and at each cough I find
myself naming the cougher, as one does for a familiar voice.
Three o’clock brings the thermometer ; then Joseph, noises in
the passage, chatter in the garden . . . Life.
July I’Zth . — Two dismal days. X-rayed yesterday. The knots
of bronchial ganglions have increased again. As I suspected.
Kuhlmann who made that admirably moderate speech in
the Reichstag the other day has had to vacate his seat. A dis-
couraging symptom of the spirit prevailing in Germany. On
the other hand the news of an Italian advance in the Piave
valley is confirmed.
sMight. — Stayed in bed. Still, a less trying day than I’d antici-
pated. Managed to talk to some visitors : Darros and Goiran.
Long consultation this morning : S^gre, at Bardot’s request,was
present. No particularly alarming change for the worse detected
by them. Everyone I come in contact with is full of hope. And,
though I warn myself against taking wishes for realities, I can’t
help yielding to this wave of optimism. Obviously we are gain-
ing ground. At Villers-Cotterets, Longpont, etc. The Fourth
Army. (If that good chap Th^rivier is still with it, he must have
his hands full these days !) Obviously, too, the Austrians have
1003
SUMMER, 1914
had a crushing defeat. And there’s the new Eastern front, with
Japan. But Goiran, who is often well-informed, asserts that the
recent bombardments of Paris have badly shaken our morale ;
even at the front the men are horrified at the thought their
families are exposed to the same perils as themselves. He gets
a lot of letters. ‘We’ve had enough of it.’ ‘Stop the war, no
matter on what terms.’ And perhaps it will end soon, thanks
to the Americans. I see one good thing in that : if our govern-
ments let America finish off the war, they’ll be obliged to let
her fix up the peace — an American peace; Wilson’s, not the
one our generals are out for.
If this improvement persists to-morrow, I shall at last write
the letter to Jenny.
July i&th . — In great pain these last few days. No energy, no
interest in anything. Diary within arm’s reach, but no desire
to open it. Could hardly bring myself to make the usual entries
in my case-history each evening. Seemingly better this morning.
Longer intervals between choking-fits, shorter attacks, cough
less violent and racking. Wonder if the arsenic treatment I
started again on Sunday accounts fof it. Have I staved off a
relapse once again?
Poor Chemery’s more to be pitied than I. Septicaemia setting
in; gangrenous broncho-pneumonia with diffused inflamma-
tion. Done for.
And Duplay, suppurating phlebitis of the right leg. And Bert,
and Cauvin. . . .
What ugly things lurk in one’s mental underworld ! All those
unsuspected tendencies that the war, for instance, has led me
to detect within myself. Even possibilities of hatred and violence,
not to say cruelty. Contempt for weaklings. And . . . fear ! Yes,
war has brought to light in me the foulest instincts, the worst
side of human nature, and I’d be able now to understand all
the lapses, even the crimes of others — now that I have found
the germs of these things in myself.
Friday, Julyi'jth. Night . — Undoubted improvement. How long
will it last? Seized this opportunity for writing the letter. This
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Antoine’s diary
afternoon. Several drafts. Difficult to strike the right note. Had
thought at first of leading up to it gradually. Finally decided
for direct methods ; a single letter, complete, explaining every-
thing. Direct methods, if she is the woman I think she is, are
certainly best. Great hopes of persuading her. Tried to present
the project as a mere formality, indispensable for the child’s
welfare.
Too late to catch the evening mail. So I have till to-morrow
morning to rewrite my letter and decide whether to post it.
Germans attacking on the Champagne front. Rochas must
be in the thick of it. Is this the first move of their famous plan ;
to push through to the Marne, make a drive at St. Mihiel,
surround Verdun and swing round westwards in the direction
of the Seine? They’re making progress already north and south
of the Marne. Dormans is threatened. (A picture in my mind
of the little town : the bridge, the church square, an ambulance
drawn up outside the porch.) How far away the end seems yet !
No chance of my seeing even the first signs of it. At the best
possible going, 1919 will be the year of the American debut,
their ’prentice year; 1920, a year of big, decisive battles; 1921,
capitulation of the Central Powers, Wilson’s peace, demobiliza-
tion.
Read my letter again for the last time. Tone satisfactory,
no possibility of misunderstanding, my arguments put at their
strongest. Surely she cannot fail to understand ; can’t say ‘No.’
July 18th. Morning . — -Just had a glimpse of Segre in his pants !
No longer in the least like Monsieur Thiers !
Afternoon. In the garden . — More to record about this morning’s
glimpse. I’d risen earlier than usual, so as to get my letter off
with the housekeeper’s car. As I was letting down my blind I
noticed one of the windows in No. 2 Building a little open and
had that memorable sight of Segre, our eminent Professor
Segre, at his toilet. Bare from the waist up, the tight-fitting
pants cruelly revealing loins scraggy as an old dromedary’s, one
wisp of hair plastered on his bald cranium, he was cleaning his
teeth with finical intentness. Am so used to seeing him under
his ‘Monsieur Thiers’ aspect — as he lets us see him, stiff and
1005
SUMMER, 1914
Starched and solemn, ekeing out every inch of his short stature,
his chin jutting forward and a handsome wig perched on his
head — that at first I didn’t recognize him. I watched him spit
some soapy water into the basin ; then, bringing his face close
to the mirror, he stuck his fingers into his mouth, fished out
his false teeth, and after scanning them with an anxious air,
proceeded to sniff them (it reminded me of an animal ‘on the
scent’ !). At that moment I stepped back hastily from my
window ; I felt not only embarrassed, but emotionally affected
in a very odd way. Yes, I experienced suddenly a fellow-feeling
almost amounting to affection for the pompous old martinet.
It’s not my first experience of that kind. I had been seized
by the same feeling, if not for S^gre, for others. For months
now I have been living in daily contact, rubbing shoulders with
this group of people : doctors, orderlies and patients. I have come
to know their figures, gestures, mannerisms so well that 1 can
promptly and positively identify, at quite a distance, the
shoulders protruding over the back of an armchair, a hand
emptying an ash-tray from a window, the voices I overhear
behind the kitchen-garden wall. But, though I cannot be
accused of being ‘stand-offish,’ there’s always a barrier of
reserve that keeps me from real intimacy. Even when I was
like other men, sociable, without a trouble in the world, I have
always felt cut off from them by that barrier ; a stranger amongst
strangers. How is it that this sense of isolation can suddenly
break down, and give place to a rush of something like affection
when I catch one of them unawares, at a moment when he is
alone? Time and again a fleeting glimpse — in a mirror or
through a door left ajar — of one of my fellow-patients engaged
in one of those humble acts that a man performs only when he
feels sure of being unobserved (poring over a photo he has
stealthily drawn from his pocket, crossing himself before getting
into bed, or, more trivial still, smiling to himself over some
secret thought with a vaguely sheepish air) has been enough
for me to discover instantaneously in him a comrade, a being
like myself whom for a spell-bound moment I long to make my
friend.
And yet I haven’t the least knack of making friends. I have
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no friend. Have never had one. How I envied Jacques his gift
for friendship !
Once more writing is a pleasure. A marked improvement in
my health these last few days.
Evening . — At lunch to-day, war memories. (When peace comes
war stories will usurp the place of hunting yarns.) Darros told
us about a patrol in Alsace, at the start of the war. One night
he was walking through an evacuated village with a few men.
The moon was shining, nobody about. Suddenly he spotted
three German soldiers lying sound asleep on the pavement,
their rifles beside them. ‘Close up like that,’ he said, ‘we some-
how couldn’t think of them as Boches ; they were just poor
dog-tired fellows like ourselves. I hesitated a bit, then decided
to pretend not to notice them. And the eight men behind me
did the same thing. We walked past the sleeping Germans
without turning our heads. And never after did any of us make
the least allusion to what we’d done, by a sort of tacit agree-
ment, that night.’
July 20th . — An ‘inspection’ of the hospital yesterday. On the
visiting ‘Commission’ were all the big bugs of the neighbour-
hood. For two days Segre, Bardot and Mazet had worked like
niggers, getting things in trim. It revived horrid memories of
barrack life in the early days ; in the back areas war has brought
no change.
Lots might be said about ‘discipline’ — the ‘making of an
army,’ as they say. I wonder ! Regular Army doctors like Brun
are definitely inferior to civilian M.O.s. Why? Because they’ve
had a sense of army hierarchy drilled into them for years. And
this habit of obedience seems to limit the freedom of their
diagnoses, their sense of responsibility, to the number of stripes
on their sleeves!
Military discipline. I remember Paoli, the orderly at the
Compiegne infirmary. A holy terror! Bloodshot eyes, the face
of a street-girl’s bully. Still, human under the surface, quite
likely ; every evening he would trot off to the river bank to get
hemp-seed for his pet starling. He was a ‘re-engaged sergeant,’
one of that detested and detestable class of veterans known to
SUMMER, 1914
the men as ‘Old Sweats.’ Why did he re-engage? Probably
because he had discovered that soldiering gave him unique
opportunities for bullying and terrorizing. The M.O. had de-
tailed him to register the names of the young soldiers reporting
sick at the infirmary. From my office I could hear them
knocking at his door. He always put the same question. ‘Now
then, out with it! Swinging the lead, ain’t you — you bloody
little swine?’ I could picture the youngster tongue-tied, staring
in terror at the sergeant. ‘Nothing to say, my lad? In that case
— clear out !’ And without more ado, the wretched youth about-
turned and decamped. But the M.O. thought very highly of
Paoli. ‘Thanks to him,’ he told me, ‘I’m not bothered with
skrimshankers.’
Father used to say that the Army is a nation’s Training
School. And always hounded his Crouy lads to the recruiting
offices.
Sunday, July aist . — This week’s tests show steady loss of
phosphorus and mineral salts in spite of all our efforts.
War-news good. An advance south of the Ourcq ; another
towards Chateau-Thierry. Movement extending from the Aisne
to the Marne. Have always heard that Foch was biding his
time for passing from the defensive to the offensive. Has that
time come?
The Major spends his days moving forward his flags on the
map. Heated discussions about Malvy’s ‘treachery’ and the
High Court judgement. Politics comes into its own again the
moment things go better at the front.
Julyiand. Night . — Kerazel had a visit to-day from his brother-
in-law, member for the Nievre. He lunched with us. Belongs to
the radical-socialist party, I gathered. Only a different label,
anyhow; all parties have fallen into line as regards the war,
and repeat the same dreary platitudes. Acutely boring con-
versation. One point, however ; referring to the Austrian peace
proposals transmitted to the French Government by Sixte de
Bourbon in the spring of last year, Goiran waxed indignant at
our turning them down. Seems that old Ribot was the most
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Antoine’s diary
intransigent, and he worked Poincare and Lloyd George round
to his view. One of the reasons put forward in French political
circles was, it seems, that there could be no question of con-
sidering peace proposals transmitted to the Republic by a
member of the House of Bourbon. It would be giving the
Royalists a trump card for their propaganda, and that would
never do ! The regime might even be imperilled. Especially
now, with all the power in the hands of the military clique.
. . . Unbelievable!
July 2^rd . — That deputy yesterday — a fine specimen of
modern restlessness. Came by the night express from Paris to
save a day. Kept glancing at his watch. A bundle of nerves.
Gave the impression of being slightly tipsy ; his hand shook as
he poured out his wine. One felt his brain wobbling, too, when
he tried to handle ideas.
He takes travel for activity, and his aimless activity for work.
And grandiloquence for logic. And a blustering tone for a sign
of competence. In conversation he takes anecdotal details for
general ideas ; in politics, a lack of vision for a proof of sturdy
realism. Takes his good health for mental vigour, and the
satisfaction of his desires for a philosophy of life. And so on.
Perhaps he also took my silence for spell-bound approbation !
July 2 '^rd. Might. — -Jenny’s letter just received.
Sorry now not to have written to her mother first, as I’d
originally intended. Jenny says, ‘No.’ Gently but firmly, ‘No.’
She claims for herself, not without dignity, full responsibility
for what she did. She gave herself freely to Jacques. His child
must have no other father — even if merely in the eyes of the
law. Jacques’ wife should not remarry. She has no reason to
apprehend her son’s reproaches. And so forth.
Obviously my common-sense proposals, far from convincing
her, struck her as quite irrelevant, not to say narrow-minded.
She doesn’t say this in so many words, but several times alludes
to ‘social conventions’ and ‘old-fashioned prejudice,’ with
obvious disdain for all who stand by them.
Naturally I shan’t leave it at that. Will try again, taking
1009
SUMMER, 1914
another line. If social conventions are negligible, why rebel
against them? Surely that’s ascribing to them an importance
they do not possess. Above all, must stress this point : that it’s
not she but little Paul who is involved. I grant that the stigma
still attaching to illegitimacy is absurd. But it exists. Once I
can make her grasp that fact, she cannot hesitate to take my
name and let me assume paternity of the child. The circum-
stances are exceptional ; my impending disappearance makes it
all so easy ! /
No time to waste. Will try to answer her to-day.
Silly, too, not to have given her more detailed explanations,
showing how simple it would be. She probably foresaw trouble,
embarrassing moments. Must put it quite plainly. ‘All you’ve
to do is to take the Riviera express one night. I’ll meet you at
Grasse. All will have been fixed up at the Registry Office. Two
hours later you will take the train back to Paris, with everything
shipshape.’
July 2^th . — Glad I wrote yesterday; did well not to leave
it till to-day. Feeling rotten; this new treatment is most
exhausting.
Absurd to think that all that’s needed to save the child a
host of troubles in after-life is a short entry in an official register !
Can’t believe it possible Jenny won’t come round to my view.
July 2 ^th. — Newspapers. We have occupied Chateau-Thierry.
A German defeat, or a tactical retirement? The Swiss Press
asserts that Foch’s ‘push’ hasn’t started yet, and what he’s after
now is merely to make things difficult for the Germans when
they fall back. A theory which is borne out by the immobility
of the British front.
Choking fits more frequent and alarming. Sharp fluctuations
of temperature. Prostration.
Saturday, July aytk . — Bad night. Bad morning mail; Jenny is
obdurate.
Afternoon. — Injection ; two full hours’ respite.
Jenny’s letter. She will not understand. To her mind this
1010
Antoine’s diary
business of making a few entries in a register would be an act of
apostasy. Typically feminine, her attitude ! She writes : T have
not the slightest doubt that, if I could consult Jacques, he would
be against any such concession to the most ignoble prejudices. I
should feel I was betraying him . . And more in the same vein.
Irritating, all this time wasted in discussion. The longer she
postpones her consent, the less fit I’ll be to cope with all the
preliminaries (collecting documents, arranging for the marriage
to take place here, putting up the banns, etc.).
Not up to writing to her to-day. Have decided that when I
do I shall follow her example and appeal to her feelings. Point
out, for instance, how much easier in mind I’ll be once I am
definitely assured that little Paul will be spared needless handi-
caps in his career. Might even exaggerate my apprehensions,
beg Jenny not to refuse me this last joy, and so forth.
July 2Sth . — Letter written and sent. Writing it a great strain.
July 2gth. — Newspapers. Progress all along the line. The
enemy dislodged from the Marne. From Fresnes, the La Fere
wood, Villeneuve, and Roucheres, and Romigny, and Ville-
en-Tardenois. How well I can remember all those places!
In the garden . — This is the scene before my eyes. On all sides
lie other gardens resembling ours, with orange-trees like small
gieen balloons, lemon-trees, olive-trees, eucalyptuses with
slashed, scarred trunks, feathery tamarisks, wide-leaved plants
of the rhubarb species, and urns pouring out cataracts of roses
and geraniums. A blaze of colour ; all the hues of the rainbow.
Each of the houses within sight is limewashed a different tint,
pink, mauve, orange-red, or merely white, and glistens in the
sunlight across the cypress hedges. The red tiles strike a vivid
contrast with the blue of the sky. Wooden verandahs painted
brown, violet or dark green, add a gentler touch of colour.
The nearest house, just on the right, is ochre-yellow with bright
blue shutters ; another house near by, a garish white with apple-
green sun-blinds, and the one wall in shadow, purplish blue.
How good it would be to have one’s home, a long life before
one, in this pleasant place !
lOII
SUMMER, 1914
In the black file of cypress-trees, a vagrant sunbeam, striking
the insulating-cups of a telegraph-pole, kindles a blaze of almost
blinding light.
July ^oth. Evening. — Went downstairs again this morning. Had
not been able to do so for the last two days.
Felt all at sea, bewildered. Now that I am cut off from the
future, I look on life and on those around me with new eyes ;
the eyes of one for whom the world of man has become some-
thing amazing and incomprehensible.
Our advance, it seems, is held up. And, to crown all, Russia
(Lenin) has declared war on the Allies.
Later. — A memory. After Father’s death I took his notepaper
to my flat. Three months later, when I was writing to the Chief,
on turning the sheet, I found the beginning of a letter in
Father’s hand. ^Monday. Dear Sir, Tour letter reached me thii
morning only, and . . .’ A shock that gave me ! As if I had trodden
on the heels of death ! His tiny, meticulous handwriting, those
few posthumous words, that busy life becalmed for ever . . . !
August ist. — Our offensive in Le Tardenois still in progress.
Victory in sight at last? But what is it costing us in lives? Big
advance between Soissons and Rheims. Bardot has had a letter
from a friend on the Somme front; he says preparations are
being made for another Franco-British push east of Amiens.
(Amiens in August, 1914. What a muddle everywhere ! 1 turned
it to account anyhow. The quantity of cocaine and morphia I
managed to scrounge, with young Ruault’s help, from the Base
Hospital dispensary, to replenish our Advanced Dressing
Station ! And how handy it came in, a fortnight later, during
the Battle of the Marne !)
The Chamber has voted, calling up the eighteen-year-olds;
amongst them Eddie, I suppose. Poor boy, he has still more
reason to wish himself back at the Fontanin Hospital !
August 2 nd. — No hope left of overcoming Jenny’s scruples.
This time her ‘No’ is final. A short letter, very affectionate, but
irrevocably firm. Can’t be helped. (The days are far away
1012
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when I refused to know when I was beaten. Am beaten now,
and know it !) She represents her refusal as a matter of principle,
and, what’s more, revolutionary principle! Goes so far as to
write: ‘Paul is a bastard. He will remain a bastard, and if his
illegitimacy brings Jacques’ child in conflict with society at an
early age, so much the better. His father would not have wished
a better start in life for his son.’ (It may be so. Anyhow, so be
it ! And may the spirit of revolt that inspired Jacques in his
lifetime triumph after his death I)
August yd. Night . — The time I like best for writing. I feel
more clear-headed than' by day ; more alone with my thoughts.
Jenny’s letters. Leaving aside the notions underlying them, I
am bound to recognize they form a perfectly coherent whole.
They lack neither forcefulness nor dignity; they inspire respect.
These lines for Paul : —
One day, old chap, you may be moved to read the ‘posthu-
mous papers’ of Uncle Antoine, and you will admire these
letters. As for the difference of opinion betwen your mother and
myself, you will unhesitatingly take her part, I know. So be it.
All the courage, the magnanimity are on her side, not on mine.
And yet I ask you to try to understand, to see that in my in-
sistence there was something more than a feeble surrender to
‘bourgeois’ prejudice, or to sordidly ‘practical’ considerations.
The rising generation — yours — will have, I fear, to grapple with
tremendous difficulties of every order, which may well, for a
long while, prove insuperable. Compared with which the diffi-
culties we were up against, your father and myself, were mere
child’s-play. This prospect, my dear Paul, fills me with dismay ;
as does the knowledge that I shall not be there to give you a
helping hand. That is why it would have been a great con-
solation to feel that I had done something, what little I could,
to help you through. To be able to tell myself that, by enabling
you to use my name, your father’s name, I had cleared your
path of one of the obstacles that lie before you, the only one
that it was in my power to remove — and of which I should like
to think, as your mother does, that I am somewhat exaggerating
the importance.
1013
SUMMER, 1914
August ^th . — Soissons retaken. They had held it since the end
of March. So now we are on the Aisne and the Vesle, facing
Fismes. (Fismes, too, calls up memories. It was there I ran into
Saunders’ brother, who was going up the line — and never
returned.)
A wise speech by old Lansdowne. Will he be listened to? By
the way things are going I should say (Goiran thinks so, too)
a peace move will be made before the winter. But Clemenceau
will turn a deaf ear, so long as he has not played his last card —
the Americans.
In Russia, too, events seem to be moving fast. There has been
an allied landing at Archangel, the Japs are at Vladivostok.
But so little information is let through that it’s impossible to
make head or tail of what is happening in Russia.
Night . — Segre back from Marseilles. At G.H.Q,. they say that
the first phase of the allied counter-offensive, begun on the i8th,
is drawing to a close. All objectives have been reached, the
Oise-Meuse front is straightened out, so that no salient is now
exposed to a surprise attack. Are we going to dig ourselves in
on this new line and stay there all the winter?
August ^th . — Should I congratulate myself on the effects of
Mazet’s new sedative? No effect on my insomnia. But my pulse
has steadied down; my nerves are in a much calmer state.
Mentally, too, there is improvement; I can think much more
lucidly. (Or so it seems to me.) Sleepless nights, but, truth to
tell, almost pleasant ones compared with others I recall. And
propitious for ‘diarizing.’
Joseph has gone on leave. Replaced by old Ludovic. Dread-
fully garrulous; talks one’s head off! When he comes to ‘do’
my room, I bolt ! But this morning, having to stay in bed for a
cauterization, I was at his mercy. His conversation was all the
more tiresome because interspersed with hiccups, grunts and
gasps, due to the fact that, in an access of unwonted zeal, he
had set to polishing my floor. With poUshing pads strapped to
his feet, he performed a sort of sailor’s jig around the room,
gabbling away all the time.
Described his childhood, in Savoy. Kept on repeating,
1014
Antoine’s diary
‘Those were the good days, sir !’ (Yes, Ludovic old boy, I know
all about that ! I say the same thing to myself each time some
memory of the past, even a disagreeable one, crosses my
mind.)
He uses colourful expressions, like Clotilde, but of a different
type, less rustic. One of the things he told me was that his
father had been a ‘piece-fitter.’ This, I learnt, is the name given
in wholesale tailoring establishments to the workman who
trims and fits together the pieces of cloth roughed out by the
cutter. A good word. Lots of people (people like Jacques) would
do well to call in a piece-fitter for their thoughts, to co-ordinate
the scraps of knowledge they have amassed.
In one of her last letters Jenny speaks of Jacques and his
‘doctrine.’ No term could be less apt. I haven’t the least in-
tention of starting a discussion with her on the subject. But it
strikes me as rather ominous for little Paul’s upbringing that
she should regard as a doctrine the more or less disconnected
views Jacques may have aired when he was with her, and she
now remembers more or less correctly !
If ever, Paul, you read these lines, please don’t run away
with the notion that your Uncle Antoine regarded your father’s
theories of life as incoherent. I merely wish to say that your
father, like all impulsive people, gave an impression of having
divergent, often contradictory ideas, which he found it none
too easy to reconcile. This much I know; he never quite suc-
ceeded in shaping them into a logical, clearly formulated
system or in giving them a well-defined direction. Similarly his
personality was composed of diverse, conflicting tendencies, all
equally imperious (that was what gave it its extraordinary
manysidedness) ; and he found it hard to choose between them,
never could weld them into an harmonious whole. That was
the reason of his unceasing ‘mental strife,’ the feverish unrest
which characterized him.
Perhaps, indeed, all of us are, to a varying extent, in a like
case. By ‘us’ I mean those who have ever accepted a cut-and-
dried system ; all who have failed to adopt once for all, at a
certain stage of their development, an organized philosophy or
a religion — a stable bedrock for their mental processes. The
1015
SUMMER, 1914
result is that people of our type are constrained to revise
periodically all the fundamentals of their thinking, and rebuild
it as best they can on makeshift bases.
August 6 th. 7 p.m . — Old Ludovic. The same fat fingers that
have just inserted and withdrawn the thermometer for No. 49,
cleaned the spittoons of Nos. 55 and 57, now drop a lump of
sugar into my lime-blossom tea, after being plunged into the
sugar-bowl. And I say, ‘Thank you, Ludovic . .
A poorish day. But I’ve lost the right to grumble.
This evening, an injection. Respite.
Night. — Insomnia. Little pain, however.
A trifle off the mark, what I wrote yesterday for you, Paul — ■
so far as it concerns myself. You might gather that my life was
a constant struggle to achieve mental stability. Quite otherwise.
Thanks presumably to my profession, I always felt at peace with
myself, had little use for ‘soul-searchings.’
About myself : —
Fairly early (during my first year as a medical student, in
fact) I managed to adjust my various tendencies, to shape my
life and thought in a congenial mould, and accept (while ad-
hering to no religious dogma or philosophic system) a sort of
private moral code. The mould in which I shaped my life was,
perhaps, restricted, but I did not feel cramped in it. Rather, it
gave me a certain peace of mind. I came to look on the fact
of living contentedly within the limits it imposed as a precon-
dition of making good in my profession. Thus, at quite an early
age, I settled down to the observance of set principles (I call
them ‘principles,’ forced and pretentious as the term may
sound, for want of a better word) which tallied with my natural
predilections and my medical career. Mine was, in sum, the
rather rudimentary ‘philosophy’ of a typical ‘man of action,’
based on a cult of energy, will-power and the like.
For the pre-war period of my life, anyhow, all this is strictly
true. True, too, for the war period up to the time when I got
my first wound. Then only (during my convalescence at the
Saint Dizier Hospital) I began to question certain lines of
thought and mental conduct which had ensured for me so far
1016
Antoine’s diary
a relative stability of outlook, and enabled me to get the
last ounce out of myself when the occasion called for it.
Tired. Reluctant to carry on with this attempt at self-analysis.
Lack of training. The further I proceed the more I realize
that what I’ve said about myself is questionable ; I’m throwing
dust in my own eyes.
For instance. I cast my mind back to some of the most im-
portant acts of my life. And I find that the ones 1 embarked on
most spontaneously were in flagrant contradiction with my
famous ‘principles’ ! At each of those crucial moments I took a
line that my ‘ethics’ did not justify. Some secret force within
suddenly impelled me to take that line — a force that overrode
all preconceived ideas, my plan for living. The result being
usually that I came to feel less sure of my ‘ethics,’ and of
myself. I even caught myself wondering if I really were the
man I thought myself to be. Still, I must admit, those moods
of self-questioning passed almost instantaneously, and did not
prevent me from retaking my stand upon my old positions.
Reviewing these things to-night, in solitude and in perspective,
I see pretty clearly that these rules of life and my practice of
abiding by them tended to warp my personality, and that
though I had no wish to do so, I had made of them a sort of
mask. And the habit of wearing it had gradually modified my
natural temperament. In the normal course of my existence
(which allowed me little time for introspection) I adapted
myself easily enough to this artificial self I had concocted. But
at certain critical moments, when I was moved to act sponta-
neously, the steps I took were obviously reactions of my
authentic self which, throwing off the mask, revealed the man
within.
(Glad to have cleared up that point — at last !)
I expect it is the same with many people. From which it
follows that, if we want to discover a man’s true character, we
should observe not his normal conduct, but those unthinking
acts — seemingly inexplicable and occasionally scandalous —
which he does ‘in spite of himself’ For only at these moments
does a man betray his real self.
Am inclined to think that Jacques’ case was the opposite of
1017
SUMMER, 1914
mine. In his case it was the innermost, authentic self that as a
general rule directed the course of his life. Which would explain
the striking instabihty of his temperament, the difficulty one
had in foreseeing his reactions, and their seeming incoher-
ence.
A glimmer of dawn on the window-pane. Another night
gone; one night less. Will try to doze off now. (For once I
hardly regret the sleepless hours.)
August 8th. Out of doors. — 86° in the shade. Intense, but dry,
invigorating heat. Wonderful climate. Could never understand
why so great a part of mankind has settled in the bleak, in-
hospitable North. Just now, at lunch, listened to them talking
over their plans for the future. They all think, or make-believe
to think, that a man who has been gassed isn’t handicapped for
life. And they also think they can resume their lives at the
exact point where they left off, when mobilized. As though
peace would be the signal for the world to slip back auto-
matically into its ‘cushy’ pre-war groove. Poor chaps, I’m
afraid they’re in for a rude awakening !
But what amazes me most is the why they talk about their
‘jobs’ in civil life. Never as a man does who has chosen a career
because he likes it, and it suits him. No, they talk as schoolboys
talk about their lessons; sometimes, indeed, as an ex-convict
might talk about a sentence of hard labour. A pity, to my
thinking. There’s nothing worse than starting life without
feeling drawn to avocation. (Or only one thing worse: starting
out with the wrong vocation.)
For Paul.
Beware of choosing the wrong vocation. So many wasted
lives, so many cases of a soured old age, are due to missed
vocations )
I picture you in adolescence; sixteen or seventeen. The age
when, above all, the mind is in a ferment. The age when your
intellect will awake, take stock of itself and form the wildest
estimates of its capacities. The age when your heart too, per-
haps, will begin to make its voice heard, and its wayward
emotions will be difficult to control. The age when, dazed and
1018
Antoine’s diary
dazzled by the new horizons opening before it, your mind will
be at a loss to choose between so many glorious possibilities.
And this is the age when youth, weak still but thinking itself
strong, and ‘hot for certainties,’ for guide-marks in the maze of
life, embraces eagerly the first assurance that presents itself.
But — beware ! For this, too, is the age (though you may not
suspect it) when your imagination will be most apt to distort
reality; even to lead you into mistaking the false for the true.
You will tell yourself ‘I know . . .,’ ‘I feel definitely con-
vinced . . .,’ and so forth. But don’t forget that a youngster
of seventeen is often like a pilot steering by a badly regulated
compass. He is absolutely certain that his adolescent impulses
are flashes of pure insight, that he may take them as sure
guides, and set his course accordingly. He never suspects that,
as a rule, he is being led haphazard by caprices of the moment,
and that the ideas which seem to him so startlingly original are
usually second-hand — a farrago of notions picked up in chance
encounters, from people he has known or books that have
come under his eyes.
Will you steer clear of these pitfalls? I must admit I fear
for you ! And I wonder if you will listen to my advice . . .
To begin with, I hope you will not be too much inclined to
brush aside impatiently the opinions expressed by your teachers,
by those who are near and dear to you. They may seem not to
understand you, yet quite likely they may know you better
than you know yourself. And if their homilies get on your
nerves, don’t forget the reason may be that, in your heart of
hearts, you feel they are well founded !
But especially I ask you to be on your guard against yourself.
Always have in mind the risk of forming wrong ideas about
your character and being misled by appearances. Practise
sincerity at your own expense ; that’s the best way of keeping
your wits alert and serviceable. Another thing you should try
to bear in mind is this : in the case of young men of your stamp
(I mean, the educated type, whose mind is shaped to a great
extent by books and heart-to-heart conversations with intelli-
gent companions of their own age) theories on life and the
human sentiments always precede experience. Their imagina-
1019
SUMMER, 1914
tion enables them to conjure up mentally a host of sensations
with which, so far, they have had no personal, direct contacts.
But this they fail to realize; they mistake knowing for experi-
encing. They believe that they personally experience cravings
and emotions which they merely know that others feel.
Next there’s this business of a ‘vocation.’ When you were
ten or twelve, I dare say, you believed you were cut out for a
sailor or explorer — because you had been thrilled by adventure
stories you had read. Older and wiser now, you smile at those
childish fancies. But at sixteen or seventeen one is liable to
make very similar mistakes. Take my advice, and fight shy of
sudden enthusiasms ; don’t be in a hurry to believe yourself an
artist, or a man of action, or the hero of a unique romance, just
because you have been moved to admire, in books or real life,
great poets, men who have ‘done things’ or splendid lovers. No,
it is a long, weary task discovering one’s real bent, and 1 advise
you to go about it patiently, methodically. Many make the
discovery too late ; some never at all. Therefore you should take
your time, refuse to let yourself be ‘rushed,’ A lot of exploratory
work is needed before one can find out who one really is. But
the moment you have found yourself, discard without delay
everything in your make-up that is not truly yours. Take
yourself as you are, with all your failings and limitations, but
spare no pains in developing your potentialities on normal,
healthy lines along their appropriate channels. For self-
knowledge and self-acceptance do not mean taking the line of
least resistance or ceasing to improve oneself. Quite the con-
trary ; they give a man the best chance of getting the utmost
out of himself, for his energies are thus canalized in the right
direction and all his efforts serve an increasing purpose. One
should enlarge one’s frontiers as far as possible — but only after
making sure that they are one’s natural frontiers. The man who,
so the phrase goes, makes a mess of his life is usually someone
who, starting off with a wrong conception of his personality,
chooses a path of life which is unsuitable for him ; or else one
who, having started in the right direction, has not been able,
or has lacked the self-discipline, to keep within the bounds
assigned to him by nature.
1020
Antoine’s diary
August gth . — An optimistic speech by Lloyd George. The note
of optimism exaggerated probably for reasons of expediency.
All the same, what has been happening on the French front
during the last three weeks exceeds our wildest hopes. (Brings
back my talk with Rumelles, in the spring.) Yesterday, it seems,
we took the offensive in Picardy. And the Americans are
coming into action. Pershing’s plan appears to be to let Foch
straighten up our front line and put Paris out of danger; then,
while the French and British armies hold the old front, to make
a big American drive towards Alsace with a view to crossing
the frontier and invading Germany. That day, rumour goes,
the war will come to a rapid end, thanks to a new gas which
can only be employed in enemy territory as it destroys every-
thing, makes it impossible for the land to produce for several
years, and so forth. (General jubilation in the mess — all these
unhappy gas-victims, many of whom will never recover, cock-
a-hoop over the possibilities of this new gas !)
August loth . — ^Have regained somewhat my taste for reading;
find I can fix my mind pretty easily on what I read, especially
at night. Just finished an excellent article by an English
physician on the after-effects of mustard-gas poisoning as com-
pared with those of other gases. His observations bear mine out
in many respects (e.g. as to secondary infections tending to
become chronic). Was tempted to write to him, enclosing some
pages of my case-history. But I would rather not embark on
an exchange of letters ; too uncertain of being able to keep it
up. Still, since the ijf I have felt definitely better. No real im-
provement of course, but I have been suffering less. A lull.
Compared with that of the preceding weeks my present state
is fairly tolerable. If it wasn’t for the exhausting ‘treatment’
every morning, my difficulty in breathing (especially acute at
sunset), and my insomnia. Still I find the insomnia less trying
when 1 am up to reading, as during the last few nights. Thanks,
also, to this diary.
Forenoon . — Standing at my window. Most impressive, the
landscape spread out before me, with its majestically rolling
hillsides, terraced with narrow strips of cultivated land. The
1021
SUMMER, 1914
green slopes are ribboned with parallel lines of chalky white,
the drystone walls between the terraces. And high above stands
sharp against the sky a rugged diadem of rocks, pumice-stone
grey, faceted with gleams of mauve and orange-red. In the far
distance, rather lower, where the green merges into grey, is a
little village stepped along a gorge, like a handful of white
pebbles lodged in a furrow. And just now big fleecy clouds are
passing overhead, chequering the vivid green expanse with
slowly moving drifts of shadow. . . . How many weeks remain
to me, to gaze at all this beauty?
August iith . — Mazet is a doctor of the same persuasion as
Major Dezavelles, the M.O. at Saint-Dizier, who refused to
have anything to do with men whom he had ‘sensed’ hopeless
cases. ‘A good leech,’ he once said to me, ‘needs flair. He
must spot the exact moment when a patient ceases to be
“interesting.” ’
Am I still ‘interesting’ from Mazet’s point of view? And if
I am, how long shall I remain so? Since Langlois developed his
abscess, Mazet has ceased going to see him.
The Somme offensive is shaping well. The English, it seems,
are set on ‘doing their bit.’ The Santerre plateau has been re-
captured ; the Paris-Amiens line placed out of danger. A battle
is in progress at Montdidier. (What memories of 1916 are linked
up for me with those names, Montdidier, Lassigny, Ressons-
sur-Matz, etc. !)
Goiran very optimistic. Insists that the tide is now flowing
steadily in our favour. I agree. (What’s happening must be a
considerable surprise to quite a number of people — our leaders,
military and civil, to begin with, who know how close a shave
we had last spring. Well, they’re holding their heads high again
these days, we may be sure. Let’s only hope they’re not holding
them too high !)
August i 2 th. Night . — Spent the afternoon copying certain
portions of my case-history to send with my letter to that
English doctor.
War news. The British are nearing P^ronne. Poor P^ronne !
1022
Antoine’s diary
What remains of it to-day? Remember so well the 1914 evacua-
tion, the town deprived of light, hand-lanterns flitting along
the streets, the cavalry in retreat — the men half dead with
fatigue, the horses limping. And that row of stretchers laid on
the ground floor of the Town Hall and extending on to the
pavement.
August i2,th. Night . — Breathing more troublesome to-day.
Have finished, however, the notes I am sending to England.
This perusal of my case-history has left me with a good —
not to say excellent — impression of it. The progress of the disease
is clearly traced, as on a graph. A factual record of considerable
importance. Unique, I should imagine. It may come to be
regarded as authoritative, and used as a basis for research for
many years to come. Must fight down the temptation of cutting
things short prematurely. It’s up to me to wait as long as I
possibly can, so as to continue my analysis up to the final stage.
Thus I shall leave behind me something anyhow of use : a full
clinical history of a case of this rare type, regarding which so
little is known at present.
There are times when this thought is a great standby. But
there are others when it’s all I can do to find a tiny grain of
comfort in it.
i a.m . — Curious the tricks that memory plays on one. It’s
interesting, when one’s embarked on a train of thought, to
call a sudden halt, and retrace the sequence of associated ideas
up to the starting-point. For instance, this evening just as
Ludovic came in with the dinner-tray, the metal lid of the salt-
cellar dropped off and fell tinkling on to the plate. I hardly
noticed it at the time. But all the evening, during my treatment,
while I was getting ready for the night, and even when I was
copying out my clinical notes, my mind was full of thoughts of
Father.
A host of old half-effaced images came crowding back upon
me: gloomy dinners at our house in the Rue de I’Universite,
Mile, de Waize’s little hands resting on the table-cloth, our
Sunday lunches at Maisons-Laffitte with the windows open and
the garden bathed in sunlight. Why? I know the reason now.
1023
SUMMER, 1914
The tinkle of the metal cap falling on the plate had automatic-
ally recalled a noise I used to hear regularly at the beginning
of each family meal, when, as Father settled heavily into his
chair, his eyeglasses swinging on their ribbon hit the rim of
his plate.
I feel I should set down some notes on Father, for Paul’s
benefit. No one is ever likely to speak to him about his father’s
father.
Father was little loved — even by his sons. He was a very
difficult man to love. I judged him with much harshness and,
I suspect, did him less than justice. To-day it seems to me that
what made him so unlovable was an insistence on the less
attractive side of certain rugged virtues and a moral inflexi-
bility carried to excess. I cannot quite bring myself to write
that his life compelled one’s admiration, and yet, viewed from
one angle, it was obviously devoted wholly to doing (as he saw
it) good. His defects put everyone against him and his very real
virtues won no liking. In fact the way he put them into practice
roused more antipathy than the worst shortcomings would
have done. 1 believe he W 3 is aware of this and that the knowledge
of his isolation made liim suffer terribly.
One day, my dear Paul, I must make an effort to explain to
you what sort of man was your grandfather, Oscar Thibault.
August 14 /A. Morning . — ^More gossip from old Ludovic. Just
now, placing his fat paw on his moustache, he mumbled con-
fidentially: ‘Would you believe it, sir? Lieut. Darros ain’t
nothing but a leadswinger !’
Naturally 1 protested. Ludovic took on a knowing air. ‘I got
eyes in my head, sir.’ And proceeded to explain that, when
Darros was staying in the annexe, he had caught him ‘faking’
his temperature. He always took a good quarter of an hour’s
violent exercise before inserting the thermometer, and when
marking up his temperature on the chart added some fractions
of a degree.
1 protested, but ! Have myself noticed some suspicious
circumstances. In the inhaling-room, for instance, Darros is
always very slack about his treatment. Stops it the moment
1024
Antoine’s diary
Bardot’s back in turned. Usually shirks the exercises he is sup-
posed to carry on with by himself. Such remissness all the
stranger as Darros is always worrying about his health and
often asks me what I think of his chances of recovery, about
which he himself is definitely pessimistic. Darros has no lesions,
but his bronchi are in a bad state and show no sign of im-
provement.
Late afternoon . — In the kitchen-garden. I like being here.
Shadows of the cypresses on the paths. Trim grass-borders.
Wattle fences. Tinkle of the Persian wheel. Pierre and Vincent
moving to and fro with watering-cans.
Still obsessed by Ludovic’s ‘revelations.’ Suppose they’re
true? Suppose Darros is a malingerer — what then? Is he acting
in a disgraceful way?
No easy problem. All depends on the angle from which one
views it. For Ludovic whose two sons have fallen in the war
it’s obviously disgraceful ; worse, a crime, an act of desertion.
I’ve no doubt he thinks Darros should be court-martialled. To
Darros’ father, too, such conduct would probably seem dis-
graceful. (I know him slightly. He sometimes comes to see his
son. A clergyman at Avignon ; an old patriotic puritan. Forced
his youngest son to enlist.) Yes, certainly for Darros senior it’s
a wicked thing to do. But for Bardot, for instance? He has been
treating Darros for the last four months, and has grown to like
him. Suppose he noticed something, would he take action, or
shut his eyes? And Darros himself — if he is really guilty of
malingering, has he the feeling he is doing wrong?
And I, how do I feel about it? Is it a ‘rotten’ thing to do?
Certainly I can’t approve of it. Have an instinctive aversion for
the ‘leadswingers’ one come across in hospitals, who do all
they can not to get well. But I can’t bring myself to say out-
right that such conduct is ‘wrong.’
A queer business. Might be interesting to try to clarify my
ideas on the subject. . . . Right or wrong?
First I note this : that even if I found him guilty of malinger-
ing, 1 should go on liking Darros. He is intelligent, cultivated,
gentle-minded, and I regard him as a thoroughly decent young
fellow. In fact I respect him, even if he is (as Ludovic would
1025 ^
SUMMER, 1914
have it) a ‘leadswinger.’ He has often spoken about himself to
me with the utmost frankness; told me about his father, his
childhood days and his Protestant upbringing — so appallingly
puritanical on the sexual side. About his married life as well,
I well remember the description he gave of his experiences at
Lyons on the eve of mobilization. He and his wife were on their
way back from Avignon, ^here they had been on holiday. Darros
was due to rejoin his regiment on the following day, at dawn.
After much searching they secured a room in a small, squalid
hotel. The whole town was in a state of feverish excitement. I
can still hear his voice when he said to me: ‘Therese was
trembling with fear, gritting her teeth to keep from breaking
down. I spent the night in her arms, sobbing like a child. Never
shall I forget those tragic hours. She gently stroked my hair
but could not bring herself to speak. And all night long there
was an infernal din in the street outside, artillery trains clattering
over the cobbles without a moment’s break.’
A malingerer, perhaps; but not a coward. Forty months’
active service in the infantry, mentioned three times in dis-
patches, twice wounded and finally gassed at Les Hauts-de-
Meuse. Married six months before the outbreak of war. A
delicate wife. A child. No private means. An ill-paid school-
mastering job at Marseilles. He was gassed (slightly) in February
last. At a convalescent depot at Troyes to begin with; his wife
came and joined him there, and married life began again for
them (a fact which, to my mind, has its relevance). After a
month or so they transferred him there, hundreds of miles from
the front. How well I can picture his feelings when he found
himself back in the South, in this genial climate, under these
blue skies ! If he finally resolved to do all he could to protract
his convalescence as long as possible — and, who knows? peace
may be nearer than most of us imagine — I feel sure that a
Protestant of the best stamp such as Darros must have had the
matter out with his conscience before deciding on such a course.
If finally he chose to save his skin at ail costs (even at the risk
of letting his disease grow worse through neglect), was he doing
wrong, was he right?
Who can say?
1026
Antoine’s diary
No, even if he is malingering, I decline to think less of him.
Midnight. — Insomnia. Dark hours teeming with interminable
meditations. A sort of instinct of self-preservation enables me,
whenever this is not utterly impossible, to divert my attention
from myself, from my ‘ghosts.’
Darros again. Rather serious this Darros business, when one
looks into it. Serious, I mean,ybr me. For it conjures up problems
affecting me personally.
Incidentally I find that I no longer believe in responsibility.
Did I ever really believe in it? Yes, as far as it’s possible for
a medical man to do so. For us doctors the frontiers of responsi-
bility are never situated quite at the same point as that assigned
by public opinion. (I remember the arguments on the subject
I used to have at Verneuil with a medico-legal expert, serving as
assistant M.O. in a native regiment.) We doctors know only
too well that men’s acts are the outcome of character and
environment. Are we responsible for our heredity or upbring-
ing, for the examples given us in our youth, or its conditions?
Most obviously not.
Still I have always acted as if I fully believed in my personal
responsibility. And I had a very strong sense (due to a Christian
education?) of merit and demerit. With lapses, however. I
had a tendency to hold myself relatively irresponsible when I
had done wrong and to claim the full merit of my good deeds.
A lot of inconsistencies in all this.
For Paul. — Don’t worry overmuch over inconsistencies. They
are vexatious, but a healthy sign. I have noticed that it was
precisely when my mind was tossed this way and that by con-
tradictory ideas, that I felt nearest that Truth, with a capital T,
which always lies just round the corner.
Could I have another lease of life. I’d like to live it under
the sign of Doubt.
The biological standpoint. During the early years of the war
I yielded — disgustedly, it is true — to the temptation of treating
its moral and social issues as mere biological data. A crude
method, leading me to such observations as; Man is a blood-
thirsty brute by nature. A rigid social system is needed to check
his depredations. Nothing better can be hoped of him. I even
1027
SUMMER, 1914
carried about in my haversack one of old Fabre’s natural
history books (unearthed in a book-shop at Compi^gne). Found
a gloomy satisfaction in regarding men, myself included, as
large, ferocious insects equipped for carnage, for attack and
defence, conquest and internecine slaughter. Told myself rage-
fully: ‘Anyhow let this war open your eyes, you sentimental
fool, and teach you to see things as they are. The universe ; a
complex of blind forces fighting their way to equilibrium by
destruction of the weaker elements. Nature: a shambles in
which individuals and species, antagonized by instinct, prey on
each other ad infinitum. No good or evil, no right or wrong. No
more for man than for the weasel or the bird of prey.’
How can a man whose duty keeps him in an ambulance-van
packed with wounded deny Might triumphs over Right?
(More definite memories. A nightfall in Le Catcau. The hour
I passed crouching behind a wall during the attack on Peronne.
The dressing station at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. The death-agony
of those young fellows from the Rifle Brigade in a barn between
Verdun and Calonne.) I recall times when, in sheer despera-
tion, I bemused myself with this biological view of human life.
A short-sighted view. The sense of utter hopelessness which
possessed me at those moments should have served as a warning
that such thoughts drag a man down into an abyss whence
there is no escaping.
Will turn out the light now, and try to sleep a bit.
I a.m . — Sleep definitely ‘off’ to-night. That nice chap Darros
(little he suspects it !) is responsible for the fact that I’ve been
racking my brain with ‘moral problems’ for the last fifteen
hours — more time than I’ve given to them in my whole previous
life.
Quite literally 1 had no time for sueh problems. Good and
evil were for me conventional terms, counters which served in
conversation, but to which I attributed no real value. And void
of all imperative significance for me. I subseribed to the code
of traditional morality — for others. I subscribed to it in this
sense: that if some successful revolutionary group were pro-
posing to abolish them, and did me the honour of asking my
advice, I should probably have urged the unwisdom of sapping
1028
Antoine’s diary
all at once these tried foundations of the social order. They
seemed to me quite arbitrary, but of great practical service for
regulating the dealings of my fellow-men amongst themselves.
As for myself, however, in my dealings with myself — I totally
ignored them.
(I can’t help wondering how I should have summed up my
personal rule of life, had 1 been asked to do so — a summing-up
for which I never had the leisure or, indeed, the inclination. I
imagine that I would have kept to some rather elastic formula
on these lines : ‘All that stimulates the life-force within me and
promotes my development is good ; everything that hinders me
from making the most of my capacities is evil.’ But I’d need to
define exactly what is meant by ‘life-force’ and ‘making the
most of my capacities.’ I give it up !)
Actually the people (if any) who have watched my way of
living — Jacques or Philip, for instance — have had few oppor-
tunities of observing the almost complete freedom I accorded
myself, in theory. For in my acts 1 have always (though without
giving a thought to it) kept to the path of what is known as
respectability, the line of conduct followed by all ‘decent
people.’ Nevertheless, on certain occasions — rare, I grant; not
more than two or three in fifteen years — at certain critical
moments of my private or professional life, I have suddenly
grown aware that my emancipation from convention was not
merely theoretical. On these exceptional occasions I found
myself transported, as it were, on to a plane where the rules
of conduct that I normally observed were a dead letter; a
plane on which even reason ceased to function, instinct and
intuition reigned supreme. It was a region of what might be
called transcendent chaos, its atmosphere was pure and bracing,
and in it I felt gloriously alone, masterful, sure of myself. Above
all, sure of myself For I had an extraordinarily vivid impression
of having suddenly come very near to . . . Hard to finish this
sentence; let’s say ... to what would be, for a God, absolute
Truth. (Capitalized again !) Yes, three or four times at least
to my knowledge I have consciously and deliberately violated
the most widely accepted rules of morality. And never felt the
least twinge of remorse. And still look back on those incidents
1029
SUMMER, 1914
with complete detachment, without a shadow of regret. In any
case I can truly say that remorse is something outside my
experience. I account for this by an innate disposition to regard
my thoughts and acts, whatever they may be, as so many
natural phenomena. And, as such, legitimate.
Feel particularly in the mood for writing to-night. And
splendidly clear-headed. If I have to pay for it with a bad day
to-morrow, so be it !
Have read the above remarks again and spent some lime
pondering over — and around — them.
Amongst others, put this question to myself In the case of
the average person, who gets through life without committing
any signal breaches of the accepted moral code, what is it that
restrains him from doing so? For hardly any normal man
escapes the temptation of committing acts that pass for ‘immoral’
now and then. Obviously I have not in mind believers, all such
as deep religious faith or a philosophic creed enables to resist
the ‘Tempter’s wiles’. But how about the others? What is it
holds them back? Timidity; fear of the law, or of getting a
bad name ; apprehension of the possible repercussions of such
acts on their private or public lives? All these factors operate,
I do not doubt, and are formidable safeguards of morality,
which a great many of the ‘tempted’ are not disposed to chal-
lenge. But all these are obstacles of a material order. Were
there no others, none of a spiritual order, it might be urged
that all that keeps the average man (assuming he has thrown
off the yoke of religion) in the narrow path, is fear of the police-
man or anyhow of ill-repute. From which it would follow,
logically enough, that every unbeliever tempted to ‘do wrong,’
provided he felt quite sure of not being found out and that
he ran no risk of punishment, would promptly yield to the
temptation, and indeed might feel a certain zest in ‘scoring
off’ the moral code. Which is tantamount to saying that, for
the unbeliever, there exist no considerations of a moral order
capable of restraining him from wrong-doing ; that for a man
who does not subscribe to any God-given law, to any religious
or philosophical belief, there exists no valid moral interdiction.
By way of parenthesis. This would seem to bear out the view
1030
Antoine’s diary
of those who explain the moral sense (conscience), and the
distinction that we all drew spontaneously between what one
ought and what one ought not to do — between right and wrong
— as being the survival in modern man of a self-discipline,
inculcated in the first instance by religion, and carried on from
generation to generation till it has become a second nature.
That may well be so. But it seems to me that those who uphold
this theory overlook one important fact : that ‘God’ is ultimately
a man-made hypothesis. And thus it cannot be ‘God,’ a product
of the human mind, who imposed in the first instance this
distinction between right and wrong; on the contrary, it is
man who has fathered it on God and promoted it to a divine
ordinance. In short, when we say the moral law has a religious
origin, we merely mean that, at some early stage of his de-
velopment, man thought fit to ascribe it to his Creator. And
therefore that he had it in himself to start with. Indeed, the
sense of right and wrong must have been most profoundly
rooted in his nature for him to have felt that impulse to endow
it with the highest, most absolute authority.
What then is the solution?
4 a.m . — Overcome by weariness midway in my ‘parenthesis.’
Two solid hours’ sleep. I owe them to this diary — and to my
philosophic divagations.
Have forgotten what 1 was leading up to. ‘What is the solu-
tion?’ What indeed! Still I had the impression (illusion?) that
I was groping my way towards one. Only, on waking, I can’t
pick up the thread of my ideas.
The problem of conscience and its origin. Why should it not
be the survival of a social habit? (Quite likely this explanation
is as old as the hills, and no discovery of mine. No matter ; it’s
new to me.)
I gm quite unable to accept the theory that human con-
science derives from some divine commandment ; and far more
inclined to take the view that, having originated at an early
stage of man’s existence, it has survived the causes which brought
it into being, and now, by virtue of tradition and heredity, is
firmly rooted in us. I see it as a relic of the experiments primi-
tive human groups were led to make, when organizing com-
1031
SUMMER, 1914
munal life and settling relations between their members, A
survival, in fact, of a rough-and-ready penal code. And it is
rather flattering for one’s human self-esteem, to be able to tell
oneself that this distinction we make between good and evil,
the ‘voice of conscience’ — a voice which often gives ridiculous
orders and yet somehow compels us to obey them; which on
occasion guides our conduct when reason baulks and falters,
and leads the wisest of us to do things which reason, called
to judgement, could not justify — I find it rather attractive to
regard what we call conscience as the survival of an instinct
necessary and peculiar to the ‘social animal’ that is man. An
instinct that has persisted since the dawn of civilization and
thanks to which mankind progresses steadily towards a perfect
state.
August i^th . — In the garden. Glorious weather. Bells ringing
for vespers. Everywhere a holiday atmosphere. Almost blatant,
this gaiety of nature; of dazzling sky and flowers, horizons
shimmering in the heat-haze. One has a spiteful impulse to
shake one’s fist at all that beauty, invoke disaster, shatter it!
No, rather to escape from it, to shrink back into oneself, one’s
suffering self!
'A great council of war is taking place at Spa; the Kaiser
and his chiefs of staff in conference. Three lines in a Swiss
paper. Nothing in the French papers. Yet this well may be
an epoch-making date, one that schoolboys will have to memo-
rize; a turning-point in the Great War.
Goiran says that many of the Foreign Office high officials
are predicting the war will be over before next winter.
Not much in the communique. The suspense weighs on one
like a brooding storm.
10 p.m . — Read just now my elucubration of last night, Sur-
prised, not to say shocked, by its prolixity. It brings out all too
plainly my limitations. (But it shows, too, a weakness of the
vocabulary we poor humans have built up. We employ the
language of emotion, not of logic, however much we try to
‘rectify’ it.)
For Paul . — Please remember, my dear Paul, that these desul-
1032
Antoine’s diary
tory jottings are the work of an invalid, and you should not
judge your Uncle Antoine by them. In any case he never felt
at ease in the byways of ideology; at the first step he went
astray. I remember when I was working for my finals in philo-
sophy at Louis-le-Grand — the only examination I did not pass
at my first attempt — how mortified I often felt. Like a coal-
heaver juggling with soap-bubbles ! And I realize that even the
imminence of death has not sharpened my wits ; I shall leave this
world without having been able to overcome my utter in-
capacity for abstract speculation.
Just on midnight. — Vigny’s Journal which I am now reading
does not bore me, yet every moment my attention wanders and
the book slips from my fingers. An effect of insomnia on the
nerves. My thoughts turn in a sad circle : death, the petty thing
a life is, the petty thing a man ; mysteries against which the
mind comes up, on which it founders, trying to understand.
And always that unanswerable question : What lies behind
it all?
What lies behind the fact that a man like myself, eman-
cipated from all moral codes, should have led a life which I
may call exemplary, when I remember how my days were
spent, all I gave up for my patients’ sake, the pains I took in
carrying out my duties?
(I’d vowed to keep off these problems, which I know my
mind is not equipped to tackle. But now I doubt the wisdom
of that course — if I want to get them out of my system.)
What motive lay behind those unselfish emotions, my con-
scientiousness and devotion to my work? . . . But one might
as well ask for what motive does a wounded lioness let herself
be shot down rather than abandon her cubs, or sensitive plants
retract their leafage, or the white corpuscules make their
amoeboid movements, or metals oxidize.
No ‘motive,’ nothing lies behind these things. Merely to state
the question is to beg the question in such cases, to assume
there is ‘something behind everything,’ to blunder into the
spider’s web of metaphysics. No, we must accept the limits of
the knowable. The wise man dispenses with the Whys ; contents
himself with the Hows. (And has a full life’s work coping with
1033 LL*
SUMMER, 1914
them !) Above all one should cure oneself of the childish desire
for everything to be explainable, to ‘fit in.’ Thus, in my case,
I must give up trying to explain myself to myself as if I were
a self-consistent unity. (For a long time I thought I was. Our
Thibault pride? No; personal vanity.)
All the same, among the various attitudes feasible, there is
one which I prefer; that of accepting the conventional moral
standards without being taken in by them. One may approve
of ‘order’ and stand by it, without necessarily regarding it as
a moral obligation, and without losing sight of the fact that
it is no more than a practical necessity for collective life, the
condition of a certain social welfare. I write ‘order’ to avoid
using such terms as ‘virtue’ or ‘good conduct.’
It’s an irritating thing to feel that one is under orders all the
time and yet make neither head nor tail of the system governing
one’s life! For a long while I imagined that one day I would
hit on a solution of the mystery. Now I know that I must die
without having found out anything to speak of — either about
myself or about the outside world.
A believer would retort, ‘But it’s so simple . . .’ Not for me !
Another access of exhaustion — but impossible to sleep. The
hellish thing about insomnia is the combination of intense
physical fatigue, a desperate craving for rest, with an uncon-
trollable mental activity which keeps sleep at bay. Have been
tossing about on my bed for the last hour; during which time
this thought has been running in my head : I’ve stood for
optimism all my life; it would be absurd for me to die in a
mood of doubt and gloom.
Optimism! Yes, that was the keynote of my life. A fact of
which I may not have been conscious at the time, but which
now I realize most vividly. That cheerfulness and brisk self-
confidence which always buoyed me up, came originally, I
suspect, from my dealings with science, and was stimulated
daily by them.
Science is something more than mere knowledge. It is a
desire to come to terms with the universe, whose laws it
glimpses. And those who follow that path find it leads them
to a wonderland infinitely vaster and more thrilling than the
1034
Antoine’s diary
mystic’s wildest visions. Science enables one to feel in close
contact, and in harmony, with Nature and her secrets.
A religious sentiment, this? The term, I own, grates on me,
and yet — ^why not?
Faith, hope and charity. One day Abbe Vecard pointed out
to me that actually I practised these eminently Christian
virtues ! Naturally I protested. At a pinch I might own to hope
and charity, but faith — absurd ! I wonder now. If to-day I
tried to justify this never-flagging zeal that kept me going at
high pressure for fifteen years, and hit on an explanation of
the indomitable confidence I had in my ‘mission,’ that ex-
planation might well sound uncommonly like religious faith.
But faith in what? Perhaps in the infinite capacities for progress
of all forms of life. 1 believe in a universal movement towards
ever higher planes. Does this mean that, without my knowing
it, I believe in a final cause ‘shaping our ends’? No matter.
In any case that is the only kind of teleology I can accept.
August i6th . — High temperature; respiration difficult, more
wheezing. Had to fall back on the oxygen cylinder several times.
Got out of bed, but did not go downstairs.
A visit from Goiran, who brought some newspapers. He still
thinks the war will end next winter. Defends his views with
much skill and vigour. Comic, the contrast between the cheer-
ful theories he enounces and the look of settled gloom he always
wears — due to the small, close-set, vacillating eyes, the long
lean nose and face grotesquely elongated like a greyhound’s
muzzle. Coughing and spitting all the time. Talked of his
profession as though it bored him. Hardly believable. Teaching
history at the Lycee Henri IV should not be a thankless task —
far from it ! Talked to me too of his student days at the Ecole
Normale. The man is a confirmed carper ; too fond of finding
fault to take a just view of anything. Sometimes I feel his mind
has been warped by too much intelligence or, rather, by a
certain type of intelligence, indulgent to itself, but callous and
ungenerous where others are concerned. Witty enough, how-
ever, on occasion.
Witty? There are two forms of wit; one comes from the
1035
SUMMER, 1914
thought that lies behind the sentiment expressed (e.g. Philip),
the other from the way it’s put. Goiran is one of those people
who pass for witty though they really have nothing much to
say. He gets his effects by tricks of elocution, by stressing un-
likely words, by shifts of tone, by the use of epigrammatic,
rather cryptic turns of speech, and by an ironic twinkle in his
eye that hints at hidden meanings. One can repeat a remark
of Philip’s and it loses nothing of its originality and savour ;
it makes good every time. But if one repeated a sally of Goiran’ s
it would fall flat, often as not.
August 1 7^^.— More and more dyspnoea. Had myself screened.
The X-ray showed that there is practically no movement of
the diaphragm in deep respiration. Bardot is away, on three
days’ leave. Feel ill, damnably ill, and can’t think of anything
else.
August igth . — Bad days and still worse nights. Mazet is trying
a new treatment in Bardot’s absence.
August 20th . — Terribly run down by the new treatment.
August 21 st . — Feel marvellously fitter this morning. Thanks
to last night’s injection slept nearly five hours ! Breathing
definitely easier. Read the papers.
JVight . — Dozed all the afternoon. This attack seems definitely
staved off. Mazet delighted.
Haunted by memories of Rachel. Is it a symptom of decline,
the hold that memories are getting on me, nowadays? When I
was ‘alive,’ I never indulged in them — I had no use for the past.
For Paul. — Morality. The moral life. It is for each of us to
find out where his duty lies, to define its quality and. scope.
To decide on his attitude, abiding by his personal judgement,
and to this end engaging in a ceaseless quest, continuous
research. Patience and discipline are needed. For, without
losing sight of reality, he must steer his way between the relative
and the absolute, the possible and the desirable, while listening
to the voice of elemental wisdom that is in all of us.
1036
Antoine’s diary
He must safeguard his personality. He must not be afraid of
making mistakes and contradicting himself time and again.
He must take stock of his deficiencies, so as to gain an increasing
insight into himself and ascertain the task that fits him — his
duty.
In the last analysis, one’s only duty is towards oneself.
August aist. Morning. — Newspapers. The English making little
progress. We are hardly doing better, despite some small local
advances. (I write ‘small local advances,’ following the com-
munique. But I can picture what those words mean for the
men making them ; I see them crawling up the communication
trenches, shells bursting round them in no-man’s land, dressing-
stations packed with wounded.)
Got up for my treatment. Shall try to go down for lunch.
Night . — Am writing by the light of a dim bedside-lamp. Hoped
to get a little sleep. Yesterday my temp, was down to almost
normal. But it’s near daybreak, and I’ve not had a wink of
sleep, not a moment’s unconsciousness. Still — a good night on
the whole.
August 22nd. Morning . — A failure of the electric light prevented
me from writing, as I’d intended, of the gorgeous display of
shooting stars we had last night.
It was so hot that at about one I rose and pulled up the
blind. Back in bed I feasted my eyes on the marvellous spectacle
of the night sky streaming with tiny cataracts of golden fire,
stars raining down in all directions. A celestial barrage! It
brought to my mind the Somme offensive, those nights of 1916
in the Mareaucourt trenches ; falling stars and English rockets
meeting and crossing in the sky, like a fantastic firework-
display.
Suddenly it struck me — and I’m certain I was right — that
an astronomer, whose spiritual home lies in the interplanetary
spaces, must find dying a much less painful process than it is
for other men.
Meditated for a long while on these things, gazing up at the
sky, the boundless firmament that always recedes a little further
1037
SUMMER, 1914
as our telescopes grow stronger. A wonderfully soothing medi-
tation. That fathomless immensity in which a host of stars like
our sun run their slow courses, and our sun itself — a million
times, if Fm not mistaken, larger than the Earth — is no more
than a tiny unit of an untold multitude.
The Milky Way, star-dust, a cloud of suns, round which
wheel billions of planets, hundreds of millions of miles distant
from each other. And all the nebulae from which new broods
of suns are born. And the discoveries of astronomers that all
this teeming mass of worlds is a mere drop in the ocean of infinite
space, in an all-pervading ether traversed by radiations, waves
of energy, of which we know absolutely nothing.
Merely to write about it makes one’s mind dizzy. A healthful
dizziness. Last night for the first time (perhaps the last) I
managed to think about my death with a sort of serenity, with
vast, superb indifference. All regrets fell away, and I felt already
free of the frail husk of life that is my body. And saw myself
as a minute, utterly insignificant particle of matter.
Resolved to gaze at the sky each night, to recapture this
serenity.
Dawn is breaking. Another day.
Afternoon . — In the garden. An- absurd thrill of gratitude
towards this diary as I open it again. Never has it seemed to
serve so well its purpose — of exorcising my ‘ghosts.’
Am still under the spell of last night’s star-gazing ! The human
animal, too, is an isolated unit. We, too, follow our lonely
orbits, without meeting or ever merging together. Each going
his own gait. Each sealed hermetically apart, aloof, in his soft
shell of flesh. Stumbling through life and disappearing. Men
passing away every moment, new ones coming ; a ding-dong
round. In the world someone born each second ; sixty a minute.
Try to picture it ! Over three thousand new-born every, hour ;
as many dead. Every year three million people make way for
three million new lives. Once a man really grasps it, lets these
figures soak into his mind, how can he possibly feel an egocen-
tric concern for his private fate?
6 p.m . — I float on wings to-day! Marvellously buoyant. A
particle of living matter fully conscious of its atomy.
1038
Antoine’s diary
Recalled a thrilling conversation that took place one evening
at Paris when Zellinger brought round his friend Jean Rostand
to see me. It’s a singular position man holds in this immense
universe. And to-day I can perceive it quite as clearly as I
did that night, listening to Rostand’s cool, unemotional voice
as he defined it with the cautious precision of the scientist and
yet imparted to his summing-up the lively imagery, the lyrical
sweep of a poet. The nearness of death gives such thoughts
a particular appeal for me just now. I handle them with reve-
rence. Can it be that I have found in them an antidote for my
distress?
Instinctively I fight shy of metaphysics and its castles in the
air. Never did annihilation seem to me more certain. 1 envisage
it with loathing, all my instincts are up in arms against it, but
I do not feel the slightest temptation to take refuge in prepos-
terous hopes.
Never before have I been so keenly aware of my insignificance.
. . .Yet what a stupendous trifle! Standing back from myself,
I contemplate that prodigious mass of molecules which for a
brief while yet is T,’ and watch, or make-believe to watch, the
secret processes which, for thirty years and more, have been
going on incessantly within me, the activities of the billions of
cells of which I am composed. All the mysterious chemical
reactions and transformations of energy which are proceeding,
unbeknown to me, in the grey matter of my brain and make
me the thinking, writing animal I am at this moment. My will,
my faculties of thought, all that ‘brain-power’ of which I used
to be so proud — what are all these but an interplay of reflexes,
independent of myself; a natural phenomenon and nothing
more, and an unstable one at that, since a few minutes’ cellular
asphyxia will put a stop to it for ever?
Evenjng . — Back in bed. Mentally alert, even a bit light-
headed.
Still musing on Man and Life. Just now was struck with
wonder, almost awe, at the thought of the vast organic lineage
that lies behind me; the hundreds of thousands of centuries,
all the successive forms of life that have gone to my making.
And, at the origin of all, that inexplicable, perhaps accidental,
1039
SUMMER, 1914
chemical combination which took place aeons ago somewhere
on the earth’s charred and crumbling surface, or in the depths
of a steaming tropic sea, gave rise to the vital protoplasm,
the basic stuff of life, and started off the process culminating
in the strange, complex animal endowed with consciousness
and a capacity for abstract concepts such as the laws of reason
and the ideal of justice, that is Man — a man like Descartes or
Woodrow Wilson.
And then another idea crossed my mind, startling, yet
plausible enough : that other forms of life capable of evolving
into beings infinitely superior to man may have been destroyed
at their inception by some cosmic cataclysm. Indeed, when
one comes to think of it, it seems almost miraculous that the
chain of life, the last link of which is modern man, should have
managed to persist unbroken through the ages up to our time,
should have survived successfully the countless geological up-
heavals of the earth’s crust, escaped the blind destructiveness
of natural forces?
How long will this miracle continue? What ineluctable con-
clusion awaits our species in the days to come? Will it become
extinct like the mastodons, the giant scorpions, the reptiles and
sea-beasts of prehistoric ages? Or will the human race have
better luck, survive all the catastrophic changes that may befall
our planet, and go on progressing? Till when? Till the sun
grows cold and life becomes impossible? And what new forward
strides will our race have made before vanishing from the earth?
One loses one’s way in such speculations.
But what new forward strides?
I cannot bring myself to believe in a cosmic plan in which
the human animal plays a favoured part. I have come up
against too many absurdities and inconsistencies in the scheme
of things to admit the existence of an Immanent Will. No God
has ever deigned to answer man’s appeals or questionings.
What he (man) takes for an answer is merely an echo of his
own voice. His universe is self-contained, limited by his limi-
tations. The most he can aspire to is to adapt this limited field
of action as best he can to his requirements; it may seem to
him an immense field, compared with his own littleness, but
1040
Antoine’s diary
it is small indeed in relation to the universe. Perhaps at last
science will teach him to be satisfied with it; even to find his
happiness, his peace of mind, in the awareness of his limitations.
A not impossible feat; science is far from having said its last
word, and it may even reconcile man with being the small and
trivial thing he is, the product of one of nature’s ‘accidents.’
It may lead him to feel permanently the great peace that hcis
fallen on me to-night, as I contemplate almost placidly the
non-being which is to be mine so soon — into which all things
ultimately lapse.
August ‘2‘^rd . — Just woke up after a longer, rather deeper sleep
than usual. Feel rested. Would have little to complain of but
for the secretions which clog my throat and make my breathing
wheezy as a broken bellows!
Fell asleep in a sort of rapture; a desperate rapture, but
grateful none the less. All the gloomy thoughts that have come
back in full force this morning seemed then of no account;
non-existence and my impending death were facts of a strictly
natural order, against which there could be no question of
rebelling. It wasn’t exactly fatalism ; rather a feeling of sharing,
even as to disease and death, in the common lot of all things.
What would I not give to recapture my last night’s mood !
Later . — On the verandah, before lunch. Conversations. News-
papers. The gramophone.
Fighting going on near Noyon and along all the front between
the Oise and the Aisne. Over two miles’ advance in twenty-four
hours. Lassigny occupied by us. The English have retaken Albert
and Bray-sur-Somme. (It was at Bray, just behind the cure’s
house, that poor Delacour came to such a sordid, stupid end ;
hit by a stray bullet in the latrines.)
Might . — Trying to regain my peace of mind. At dinner-time
had a violent, very prolonged choking fit, which has left me
utterly prostrated.
August 26th . — ^Almost constant pains at the back of my chest
since yesterday morning. Last night they became unbearable.
Accompanied by vomiting.
1041
SUMMER, 1914
August 27//!. 7 p.tn . — Have drunk a little milk. Joseph due
to return presently, before disappearing for the night. Am lis-
tening for his footsteps. Plenty of important things for him to
do : tuck in the sheets, shake out the pillows, let down the
mosquito-net, pour out my medicine, empty the spittoon, place
within easy reach my glass of water, bottle of tabloids, the
lamp-switch and the pear-push of my electric bell. ‘Good
evening, sir.’ ‘Good evening, Joseph.’ Then a long wait. At
8.30 Hector, the night orderly, will look in, Never speaks. Just
opens the door eight or ten inches and pokes his head in. As if
to say: ‘I’m at my post. All’s well. You’ve nothing to worry
about !’
Then solitude; another interminable night beginning.
Midnight . — Courage failing. Going to pieces mentally. All
my thoughts hark back miserably to myself — i.e. my end. If
I think of anyone I knew in the old days, promptly I catch
myself reflecting ; ‘Someone else who doesn’t know I am dying,’
or ‘I wonder what he’ll say when he hears of my death.’
August 28th . — Pain seems to be diminishing. Perhaps it will
disappear as unaccountably as it set in. X-ray bad. Proliferation
of the fibrous tissue developing more rapidly since the last
examination. Especially in the right lung.
August 2Qth . — Definitely in less pain. But very exhausted after
these four bad days.
War news. The latest offensive (between the Scarpe and the
Vesle) seems to be going well. The English advancing on Noyon.
We have occupied Bapaume.
For Paul. — Proud, that you will be. It’s in our blood. Take
yourself as you are, and be proud — deliberately. Humility, that
parasitic ‘virtue,’ lowers a man. (And is, often as not, no, more
than a secret recognition of incompetence.) Neither vanity, nor
modesty. Know yourself strong, to be it.
Parasites, too, the blandishments of self-denial, the desire
to abase oneself, to be given orders; the smug satisfaction of
obedience, the dread of freedom. Parasites that sap a man’s
vitality, reduce him to inertia. One should cultivate the virtues
1042
Antoine’s diary
that uplift ; and the greatest of these is — energy. For it is energy
that makes the man.
And the price he pays for it is loneliness.
August ‘^oth . — ^We have advanced beyond Noyon. What has
it cost in lives?
Surprised that the Press is allowed to go on saying that the
end of the war is in sight. If America has taken the field, it
is not with the object of a merely military victory or an army-
made peace. Wilson’s aim is to decapitate politically Germany
and Austria; to wrest from them the tutelage of Russia. But
even at the rate things are going it’s surely over-optimistic to
expect a breakdown of the Teutonic empires, and the estab-
lishment of solidly republican governments, with which we can
negotiate to good purpose, at Berlin, Vienna and St. Peters-
burg, within six months or so.
Half a dozen tightly stretched telegraph-wires score the
rectangle of blue sky framed in my window, like scratches on
a photographic plate. On rainy days an endless string of tiny
drops of water slithers along each wire, all racing in the same
direction, an inch or two apart, never catching each other up.
Impossible to look at anything else, to fix one’s mind on any-
thing else, when this is happening.
September ist . — ^Another month beginning — shall I see the end
of it?
Have started coming downstairs again. Lunched in the mess.
Since I stopped shaving (in July) have had little occasion
to look at myself in the mirror above my basin. Unexpectedly
just now in the office I caught sight of my face. And all but
failed to recognize that gaunt, bloodless, bearded face as mine.
‘A bit run down,’ Bardot conceded. ‘At death’s door,’ would
be nearer the mark. At best only a few weeks more to go.
The English have retaken Mount Kemmel. We are attacking
along the canal, the Germans falling back on the Lys.
Night . — Thinking of Rachel. Why Rachel? Those long droop-
ing eyelashes that veiled her eyes in a sort of golden mist. Her
gaze so full of ripe experience, the way she sometimes laid her
1043
SUMMER, 1914
hand upon my eyes to prevent my seeing the passion on her
face. The firm pressure of her fingers that suddenly relaxed,
at the same instant as her lips and all the muscles of her body.
September 2nd. — h slight breeze. Chose a place to leeward of
the building. Behind me, on the verandah, I heard Goiran,
Voisenet and the C.S.M. comparing notes about their student
days in Paris, The Latin Quarter, its cafes and dancing-halls,
pretty ladies and the rest. Listened for a while, then retreated
to the lounge, in a thoroughly bad temper. But curiously stirred
as well.
Don’t be afraid, my dear Paul, of wasting your time. . . . No,
that isn’t quite what I meant to say. Rather, be convinced that
man’s life is terribly short, that you have very little time before
you to make the utmost of your possibilities.
But, all the same, I advise you to squander a little of your
youth. Your Uncle Antoine who is dying cannot forgive him-
self for never having squandered an hour or two of his.
September ‘^rd . — First glimmer of the. dawn. I dreamt of you
last night, Paul. I was sitting in the garden here, you stood
beside me; I had my arm around you, pressing you to my
side, and the life-force I felt surging in your sturdy little body
brought to mind a young sapling thrusting up bravely towards
the sun. And somehow you were at once the child I held on
my knees some weeks ago, the growing lad I was, and the
doctor I have become. On waking, for the first time this thought
flashed through my mind : ‘Perhaps he’ll be a doctor !’
I let my fancy play with the notion. And I’ve a mind to
leave you some big bundles of notes, the record of ten years’
clinical experience and research, and various projects I had
hoped to carry out. If when you are twenty, you personally
have no use for them, hand them, please, to some young doctor.
But no, I won’t give up my dream so lightly; I see — this
morning I insist on seeing — the young doctor who is to carry
on where I left off, asjou, and not another.
jVbon. — I suspect that I was wrong to drop the re-education
of my larynx and cut short my breathing exercises. During the
1044
Antoine’s diary
past fortnight I have been going steadily downhill and my
condition this morning necessitated galvano-cautery treat-
ment.
Spent the morning in bed.
Read several times Wilson’s Labour Day message. It is at
once idealistic and rich in common sense. Wilson repeats that
a lasting peace must be something more than a mere readjust-
ment of the balance of power in Europe. This war, he says
unequivocally, is another ‘War of Emancipation.’ We must
not slip back into the old rut, but make a clean sweep of the
follies of pre-war Europe, when peaceful, industrious peoples
let themselves be ruined by armaments and spent their days
guarding frontiers with fixed bayonets. The nations must unite
in peace and amity. The end of the war must bring the Old
World that sense of security which gives the U.S.A. its unique
stability. The coming peace must not humiliate the vanquished,
must leave no itch for revenge behind it, nothing that could
foster a recrudescence of the war-spirit.
Wilson lays down clearly the prime condition of such a peace.
Autocratic governments must be destroyed. That is essential.
There can be no security for Europe so long as German im-
perialism has not been uprooted. So long as the Austro-German
bloc has not made a decisive move towards democracy. So long
as we have not sterilized that hotbed of false ideals (false,
because inimical to the general welfare of mankind) which
consists of a mystic faith in imperialism, the ruthless glorifica-
tion of brute force, the Germans’ claim that, being superior
to all other races, they have a right to rule them. (E.g.
the Kaiser and his satellites who regard this as a Holy War,
and each German as a Crusader whose mission it is to impose
German hegemony on the world.)
Night . — Goiran and Voisenet dropped in after dinner. Very
pleasant. Talked about Germany. Goiran maintained that the
Germans’ odious cult of violence is less a product of the imperial
regime than an innate national and racial propensity; an
instinct rather than an acquired character. The usual counter-
arguments. Germany isn’t only Prussia, and so forth. Even
Goiran had to admit that there exist in Germany the makings
1045
SUMMER, 1914
of a peaceful, liberal-minded nation. And even supposing that
the German ‘Evangelism’ (as he called it) is a racial instinct,
what then? Obviously an autocratic government fosters, deve-
lops and exploits it. It depends on us (if we win this war), on
the nature of the peace terms we impose and on our attitude
to the defeated nation, whether this maleficent spirit is or is
not to persist in post-war Germany. The schooling in demo-
cracy which Wilson desires the Germans to undergo should
soon reduce its virulence or divert it into other channels.
Provided, of course, that the peace treaty leaves no rankling
grievance in the German mind. Fifteen years should see this
‘reformation’ through. Am very hopeful and pretty well con-
vinced that after the year 1930 there will be a republican,
patriarchal, industrious, peace-loving Germany — one of the
most solid guarantees of a United Europe.
Voisenet reminded us of November, 1911. Very properly.
Why should the Franco-German agreement arranged by
Caillaux have merely put back the war? Because it did not
modify the German political system. Because the aims of Ger-
many, Austria and Russia continued being identical with those
of their emperors, statesmen and the military party. Wilson
has grasped this. Merely to defeat the Kaiser will serve no
purpose if we fail to break the domination of the Prussian spirit
and put an end to its Pan-Germanist ambitions, the lust for
world-conquest. Yes, the underlying causes must be extirpated
if we are to feel sure that Prussianism will not rear its ugly
head again. Only thus will lasting peace be ensured.
A fact to remember: it was the Kaiser’s government, alone
against the rest of Europe, that wrecked the Hague Conference.
Goiran gave us details. An agreement had been reached for the
limitation of armaments; a pact, of which great things were
expected, had been drawn up. On the eve of its execution the
German representative received orders from his Government
not to sign. That day the German Empire dropped the mask.
If the principle of arbitration and the limitation of armaments
had been accepted by Germany as by the other Powers, the
European position in 1914 would have been quite different,
and war most probably averted. Facts which we must not forget.
1046
Antoine’s diary
So long as a government imbued with the doctrine of Pan-
Germanism holds absolute sway over seventy million subjects
whose national pride it deliberately keeps at boiling-point, there
can be no peace in Europe.
September 4th . — Very acute twinges of pain in the side, flitting
from point to point — in addition to all the rest.
The communique announces the capture of Peronne. This
is the first time, I believe, that we have been allowed to know
we lost it during the August fighting.
A short letter from Philip. At Paris they are saying Foch
intends to launch three simultaneous offensives : towards Saint
Quentin, along the Aisne, and, with the Americans, along the
Meuse. As Philip says, ‘more blood-letting in prospect.’ Is it
really necessary that so many lives should be lost before the
Powers accept Wilson’s ‘points’?
Mght . — Goiran looked in. Fuming with indignation. De-
scribed the argument at dinner regarding Wilson’s latest mes-
sage. Almost everyone held that the League of Nations should
be, above all, an instrument for maintaining after the war a
coalition of the whole civilized world against Germany and
Austria. According to Goiran this opinion, which is already
firmly rooted in the French official mind (from Poincare and
Clemenceau downward), may be summed up as follows. For
the establishment of a durable peace in Europe it is a sine qua
non that the Boches should be excluded from the League. They
are a race apart, a blot on civilization, incurably war-minded.
If they are given a free hand, good-bye to peace! Therefore
Germany must be kept down by every means, made incapable
of aggression.
Horrible notions ! If what Goiran says of the ‘official’ view
is correct, it is nothing short of a betrayal of Wilson’s plan. To
exclude peremptorily from a so-called Universal League a third
of Europe, on the pretext that the nations thus excluded are
responsible for the war and can never be trusted again, is tan-
tamount to nipping in the bud the project for an international
jurisprudence, to setting up a mere parody of a League of
Nations, to confessing that our real war-aim is to keep Europe
1047
SUMMER, 1914
under the Anglo-French hegemony, and to sowing the seeds
broadcast of future wars.
Happily Wilson is too shrewd to fall into this nationalistic
trap !
September ^th, Thursday . — Can hardly keep on my feet to-day.
It took me five minutes to walk down the stairs, struggling like
a drowning man against asphyxia.
Slowly but steadily going downhill. Last night remembered
Father’s death-agony. That nursery-song he kept on singing to
himself, about the ‘pretty pony’ and riding to the tryst.
So clinkety and clankety
Along the lanes we go. . . .
(Must get down to writing those notes about Father which
I want to leave to Paul.)
How often when I had a few days behind the lines, in a rest
camp, and was revelling in the joys of a real bed to sleep in,
did I lie and meditate for hours on the things I’d do once the
war was over ! The childish dreams I dreamt of the new life,
more useful, more diligent, 1 was going to lead. ‘After the war’
— the words seemed chafed with magic.
Death. No ‘after the war’ for me. The fixed idea returns.
A foreign body lodged in my brain, a festering, malignant
growth. Everything might be changed if I could reconcile
myself to death. But, for that. I’d need to fall back on some
metaphysical belief. Outside my range.
Curious that a mere relapse into non-existence should go
so cruelly against the grain. Cannot help wondering how I’d
feel if I believed in Hell, and was sure of being doomed to
eternal torments. ... I doubt if even that could be much worse.
Night . — The Major has just sent up (by Joseph) a magazine
with a marker in it. Opening it at the marked page, I read:
Wars have all sorts of pretexts, but only one cause — the Army. Abolish
armies and you abolish war. But how are armies to be abolished? By
suppressing autocratic government. A quotation from one of Victor
Hugo’s speeches. Reymond has noted in the margin. Peace
Congress, 1869.
1048
Antoine’s diary
Well, he can ironize to his heart’s content ! But is the fact
that so far back as fifty years ago the suppression of autocratic
regimes and the limitation of armaments was already mooted,
a reason for abandoning hope that at long last men will learn
wisdom ?
Sputum more copious these last few days. The amount of
debris has increased (sloughs of tracheal mucus and mem-
braneous casts).
September 6/A.-- Had a letter this morning from Mme. Roy.
She writes to me every year on the anniversary of her son’s
death.
(Lubin often reminds me of young Manuel Roy.)
What would be Roy’s attitude, were he alive to-day? I can
picture him ‘crocked’ (like Lubin), but game as ever, eager
to recover quickly and go back to the front.
I often wonder, Paul, what will be your ideas about the war
in the years to come — say, in 1940, when you are twenty-five.
You will be living no doubt in a very different Europe, a
continent made safe for peace. Will you even be able to under-
stand what was meant by ‘nationalism,’ or the fine enthusiasm
of the young men who were your age, twenty- five, in 1914, and
went to fight for their country, proud and glad to do so, as
was Manuel Roy? He was a very lovable young man, Paul,
and I hope you will not be unjust, but try to understand. Make
no mistake about these youngsters’ heroism; they had no wish
to die, but France was in peril and they were quite prepared
to lay their lives down in her cause. Not all of them were mere
hotheads; many, like Manuel Roy, were ready to make that
supreme sacrifice because they believed that by so doing they
were ensuring for the rising generation (your generation, Paul)
a better, happier future. There were many such, I can assure
you. Your Uncle Antoine vouches for them.
War news good. We have crossed the Somme and reached
Guiscard. Another advance, north of Soissons ; Coucy recap-
tured. Shall we be able to stop the Germans from digging
themselves in behind the Escaut and the Saint Quentin
canal?
1049
SUMMER, 1914
September ’]th. Might. For Paul . — Still thinking of the future.
Your future. Those better, happier times to which young men
like Manuel Roy looked forward. Happier? I hope so for your
sake. But we are bequeathing to you a world that’s sadly out
of joint. I fear your start in life will take place in a period of
great unrest, in a world of divided purposes, jarred by the
clash of warring principles, the new and the old. Lungs of steel
will be needed to cope with that polluted atmosphere; and
a young man’s life will be far from a bed of roses !
Usually I refrain from prophesying. But to glimpse the
Europe of to-morrow needs no special foresight. Obviously all
nations will be impoverished; social conditions everywhere in
upheaval. Morally there will be a violent break with the past,
and all the old standards will be cast into the melting-pot. The
world will pass through a phase of growing pains, with bouts
of fever, convulsions, sudden improvements and relapses. And
reach a new equilibrium in the end, but only after many, many
years. It will be a hard birth, the birth of your New World.
And you, Paul, how will you fare in those tempestuous times?
You will find it none too easy to form your own ideas, with
everybody (as always in such periods) vaunting his pet world-
saving nostrum, and imagining he has the Truth in his pocket !
Goiran foresees an era of sheer anarchy. That I doubt. Or if
there is a spell of anarchy, it will be on the surface only and
will not last long. For the whole trend of human progress is in
the other direction. All history vouches for it. Any permanent
breakdown of civilization is unthinkable. Inevitably there will
be setbacks, but the human race is bound to move towards
greater and greater organization. In fact this war will register
most probably an emphatic forward stride, if not towards
fraternity, at least towards a mutual understanding between
nations. Wilson’s peace will broaden the European oytlook;
notions of human fellowship, of civilization as a common heri-
tage, will take the place of nationalism.
In any case you will see tremendous changes in the shape
of things. And what I wanted to say is this. It seems to me that
in the days which are coming public opinion and the directive
ideas behind it will have a much greater, indeed a prepon-
1050
Antoine’s diary
derant influence on world affairs. The future will be more
malleable than was the past; the individual carry much more
weight. Under the new conditions a man of worth will have
a far better chance of getting a hearing, winning acceptance
of his views and taking a share in the reconstruction of society.
To be a ‘man of worth’ — that is the thing to aim at; to
develop a personality that compels recognition — and to mis-
trust the ideologies of the moment. There is always such a
temptation to shirk the strain of thinking for oneself To let
oneself be caught up in a great wave of collective enthusiasm ;
to embrace some comforting doctrine because it makes things
easy. Will you be able to resist that temptation? You will find
it none too simple. For it is precisely when his mind is most
beset with doubts that a man is liable, in his desire to find
an escape at all costs from perplexity, to clutch at any ready-
made creed that offers reassurance. Any fairly plausible answer
to the problems he has been brooding over and cannot solve
unaided will strike him as a heaven-sent solution — especially
if it bears the seeming guarantee of being endorsed by the
majority. There indeed lies your greatest danger, and I advise
you to turn a deaf ear to ‘slogans’ of the day. Refuse to become
a ‘party man’ ! Better endure the torments of uncertainty than
enjoy the specious peace of mind that doctrinaires induce in
their adherents. Granted that groping in the dark, alone, may
be unpleasant; but it’s the lesser evil. Beware of following
blindly the false leads of others; nothing could be worse. In
this respect, my dear Paul, your father’s life may serve you
as a model. In his independence, his refusal to pin his faith to
any hide-bound creed, his isolation, you have a rare example
of loyalty towards oneself, of conscientiousness, of strength of
mind and dignity.
Daybreak. Another sleepless night is ending.
(I detect a tendency to ‘preachify’ when I write for Paul’s
benefit. Must myself beware of using that word ‘Beware !’ —
and of imperatives at large !)
Writing to Paul about ‘the man of worth,’ I see I only over-
looked one thing — the formula.
The ‘men of worth’ I have come in contact with were mostly
1051
SUMMER, 1914
members of the medical profession. Still I am inclined to think
that the attitude of the good citizen towards events, when
dealing with the realities and unforeseen contingencies of social
life, must parallel, more or less, that of the doctor towards
disease. The great thing is to bring an open mind to every
situation. It is common knowledge that in medicine what one
gets out of books rarely enables one to cope with the special
problems presented by each individual case. Every illness —
and by the same token every social crisis — presents itself as a
new type of disorder without a precedent exactly tallying —
as an exceptional case, in fact, for which a new method of
treatment has to be devised. Much imagination goes to the
making of a man of social worth.
Sunday, September 8/A. — On waking this morning I coughed
up a piece of tissue nearly four inches long. Gave it to Bardot
for analysis.
Have re-read what I wrote last night. Amazed at my ability
now and then to take an interest in the future, in those who
will come after me. Is it only for Paul’s benefit? Thinking it
over, I find this interest wholly spontaneous, and less inter-
mittent than I supposed. On the contrary, it is my surprise
at feeling this interest which calls for mental effort, an act of
conscious introspection. In reality, thinking of the future is a
second nature with me; I’m always doing it. Odd!
Before Lunch . — A conversation I had with Philip long ago —
one of our first non-professional conversations, when I had only
just started working under him — has just come back to me. It
related to an item in the morning’s news which had caught his
eye. A man about to be executed, as the executioner’s assistants
seized him and were placing his neck under the guillotine had
started struggling, turned and shouted to the Warden, ‘Don’t
forget to send my letter.’ He had learned when in the condemned
cell that his mistress had taken another lover, and just before
being led to execution had written to the Public Prosecutor,
confessing to another crime which had gone undetected and in
which the woman had played an active part.
1052
Antoine’s diary
Both of us were at a loss to understand how a man could, at
the very last moment of his life, be so exclusively preoccupied
with mundane matters. Philip saw on it a proof of the impossi-
bility it is for most men to ‘visualize’ their non-existence.
The story does not surprise me now so much as it did then.
September gtk . — foul taste in my mouth. What’s the use of
this added infliction? Never had any faith in this new creosote
preparation, which recalls the dentist’s chair and spoils one’s
appetite.
Afternoon. Out of doors . — This morning, writing in the date,
September gth, I suddenly remembered. To-day is the second
anniversary of ‘Reuvillc.’
Night . — Have spent the day thinking of that experience.
We had reached Reuville on the previous evening and set
up our Casualty Clearing Station in the crypt of the village
church. The place was in ruins, shelled out of recognition. A
pitch-black night lit now and then by Very lights. The Colonel
(acting Brigadier) had installed G.H.Q^. in what remained of a
big house — three broken stumps of walls. Seventy-fives banging
away in a wood close by. The edges of the pond strewn with
fallen gables. A red eider-down quilt lying in the street ; I was
to ‘stop one’ next day just beside it. Underfoot mud and
rubble, churned up by the wheels of battery- wagons. Looking
out through the splintered windows of the crypt one saw, just
beyond the village, a range of low hills, from which came down
in bunches the wounded men, white with dust, hobbling along
with that curious air of mild, resigned bewilderment they all
had. I can still see the crest-line of those hills etched black upon
the flaming sky, fretted with barbed-wire posts all leaning the
same way as if a great gale had swept them. . . . On the left
a windmill lay spreadeagled on its wings, like a broken toy. (I
take an odd pleasure in depicting this scene. I wonder why. To
rescue it from oblivion? And for whom? Is it for Paul to know
that one morning years ago at Reuville . . . something hap-
pened to his Uncle Antoine?) The crypt was crowded from
nightfall on with wounded men, groaning and cursing. At the
far end was a layer of straw on which they dumped the dead
1053
SUMMER, 1914
alongside the dying and severely wounded. A hurricane-lamp
stood on the altar ; candles stuck in bottles on the floor. On the
vaulted roof our shadows danced a weird fandango. I seem to
see once more the operating-table, a makeshift, some planks
propped on two barrels, the piles of lint — I can see it all as
clearly as if Fd had time to pause and contemplate it. As a
matter of fact, I was frantically busy, buoyed up by the joy
of feeling I was ‘doing my job,’ and doing it well ; in a state of
feverish activity. The energy I had in those days ! One had to
act quickly, keeping one’s wits about one all the time and nerves
strung to their highest tension, till one seemed to feel the will-
power tingling along one’s arms up to the finger-tips. And with
it all a sort of anguish, blunted, however, by an incapacity for
feeling, a machine-like automatism. What kept a man going
was the work in hand; he had to give his whole mind to it,
shut his eyes and ears to everything else. Each essential gesture
had to follow in due order, rapidly, without haste but without
wasting a second, whether a wound had to be asepticized or an
artery ligatured, a fractured limb set. Then — ‘Next customer,
please !’
I can visualize less clearly that shed or stables on the far side
of the little street, in which they laid the wounded brought on
stretchers. But I remember very well the street itself — one had
to slither along it, hugging the walls — with bullets droning by
and flaking off the plaster. And the furious expression of that
little bearded major with his right arm in a sling, as he flapped
his unwounded hand in front of his face as if he were being
pestered by a swarm of insects. ‘Too many damned flies about !
Infernal nuisance !’ And suddenly another bearded face rises
before me — the rather sinister face of that elderly volunteer who
was in our Ambulance Unit at Longpre; and I can hear his
gruff voice as he shifted a wounded man off his stretcher : ‘Off
yer go, lad ! Doctor’s orders !’
All that night we kept at it till we dropped, never suspecting
the Germans had worked round the village. At dawn a liaison
officer rushed up, told us the enemy was on our flank, the
covered sap by which we had come was now ‘unhealthy,’ and
there was nothing for it but to make a dash across the village
1054
Antoine’s diary
square, which was being raked by machine-guns, and try to
reach the nearest communication trench. Never had, even for a
moment, the idea that I was risking my life. Falling, I had a
glimpse of the red eiderdown, one last clear thought: ‘Lung
punctured. . . . Heart intact. Pll pull through.’
Curious how things pan out! If that morning I’d been
wounded in an arm or leg, I wouldn’t be where I am now. The
whiff of mustard gas I inhaled two years later wouldn’t have
had such disastrous effects if I’d had both lungs intact.
September loth . — Since yesterday haunted by memories of the
war.
Will set down for Paul’s benefit an episode in my war service,
owing to which I was kept at the front much longer than most
of my colleagues from the hospitals. It took place in the winter
of 1915. I was still attached to my regiment, which was then
up the line on the northern front. But a rotation-roll had been
drawn up between the various battalion M.O.s, by virtue of
which each of us took a short spell of duty, every fortnight or
so, at a small C.C.S. (twenty beds) some four miles behind the
lines. On coming there one night I found eighteen men lying
in a sort of cellar. All were running temperatures; some as
high as 104°. By the light of a hand-lamp I examined them. No
possible mistake; all had enteric fever. Now enteric cases were
‘forbidden’ at the front; there was a standing order the gist of
which was that we must never diagnose enteric fever. I rang
up my C.O. at once and told him that my eighteen ‘patients’
were suffering from gastro-intestinal troubles of a paratyphoid
nature. (I was careful to avoid using the word ‘typhoid’ or its
equivalent ‘enteric.’) I also informed him that I was convinced
that if these eighteen poor fellows were not evacuated forth-
with they would die in the said cellar, and that, as a matter of
conscience, I refused to take over the so-called clearing hospital.
Early on the following morning a car came to fetch me and I
was put ‘on the mat’ at Divisional H.Q^. I stood my ground
against the ‘brass hats’ — and to such effect that they con-
sented to having the men evacuated forthwith. But that
brush with authority left a black mark on my service
1055
SUMMER, 1914
record, which held up my promotion till the day when I was
wounded.
Night . — Thinking over my relations with the other men here.
A promiscuity which, on the face of it, recalls that of the front.
Actually quite different. Here one rubs shoulders; nothing
more. At the front the humblest cook’s mate is a brother.
Thinking, too, of the men with whom I was intimate.
Melancholy retrospect! Almost all killed, disabled, invalided
out, or ‘missing.’ What’s become of Carlier, Lambert, that nice
chap Dalin, and Huart and Mulaton? And funny little Nops?
And the rest — how many of them will see the war through
unscathed ?
Am thinking of the war just now in a new way. Daniel talked
to me at Maisons, I remember, of the war as forging a unique
bond of friendship between men. (But how brittle a bond, and
forged at what a cost!) In a way he was right, however; war
does bring out sentiments of compassion, of generosity and
mutual affection. In the shadow of death, nothing subsists but
certain primitive reactions, common to all. Officers, N.C.O.s
and other ranks, all endure the same constraints, hardships,
agonies of boredom; the same hopes and fears; often they
share the same food and the same newspaper. There is less
pettiness, less back-biting, less desire to ‘score off the other
fellow’ than in civil life. Each stands in such dire need of his
neighbour ; one comes to help and love him, so as to be helped
and loved in return. Personal grudges and rivalries die out in
the front line. Hatred, too. One doesn’t hate even the Boche
in the trenches opposite, a victim like oneself of the world-wide
madness.
Another point ; by the sheer force of things wartime is a time
of meditation. For the uneducated man as well as for the edu-
cated. A crude sort of meditation, but profound. Which, too,
is more or less the same for everyone. Perhaps it is the constant
peril of death that compels even the least thoughtful-minded
to start thinking. (Hence this diary !) There’s not one of the men
in my battalion whom I didn’t catch unawares, at some time
or other, in a brown study. In that mood of rapt, remote
meditation, the need for which came now and again, and
1056
Antoine’s diary
which one tried to conceal. The only corner of oneself one shut
against the world. In the enforced depersonalization of army
life meditation was the last refuge of the personality.
What will the men who escape death in the war retain of all
these musings? Very little, perhaps. In any case a passionate
desire to enjoy life in their own way, and a loathing for sterile
self-sacrifice, for high-sounding slogans, heroism. (Some, how-
ever, may regret the ‘virtues’ of the front.)
September iith . — The fragment I coughed up the other
morning has been histologically identified. Not a false mem-
brane but a mucous cast.
Night . — As a matter of fact I think almost as often of my past
life as of my death. Am always harking back to the past. I
rummage in it like a rag-picker exploring a dust-bin. And now
and again fish up a scrap which I examine, pore upon, and
weave interminable dreams about it.
A man’s life is such a little thing. 1 do not say this because
my own has been cut short — it’s true of every life. A platitude,
of course ! But how few, when they repeat such phrases as ‘a
brief candle in the eternal night,’ realize what that really means.
How few men feel the tragic truth behind such verbiage !
Impossible to rid one’s mind wholly of the futile desire to
find a ‘meaning’ in life. Even I, reviewing my career, often catch
myself wondering: What was the point of it?
It had no ‘po^nt.’ None whatever. If we find it so hard to
admit that obvious fact, the reason is simply that we have
eighteen centuries of Christianity in the blood. But the more
one thinks, the more one observes the outside world and one’s
own mind, the more apparent it becomes that life is pointless,
‘signifying nothing.’ Millions of beings take form on the earth’s
crust, live their little hour, procreate and pass away, making
room for other millions, which likewise in their turn will pass
away. Their brief appearance has no significance ; life no mean-
ing. And nothing matters — except, perhaps, to get through this
short lease of life with the minimum of suffering.
A fact which is neither so disheartening nor so fatal to
activity as it might seem. The feeling of having made a clean
1057 MM
SUMMER, 1914
sweep of all the illusions cherished by those who insist on finding
a meaning in life, has much to be said for it ; it gives one a sense
of power and freedom, and a marvellous serenity. And, if one
knew how to take it, might be a first-rate tonic for the mind.
A memory has just come to me of that playroom on the
ground floor of the hospital annexe which I walked through
every morning at lunch-time, on my way out. It was always full
of children on all fours playing with building blocks. Some were
convalescent, others incurable cases ; there were backward
children, half-witted children and some remarkably intelligent
ones. A world in miniature. Humanity viewed through the
wrong end of a telescope. Many contented themselves with
shifting to and fro the bricks in front of them, turning them over
and looking at the different sides. Others, whose wits were
brighter, set out the bricks in rows, matching the colours, or
arranged them in geometrical patterns. Bolder spirits amused
themselves building little, rather tottery houses. And now and
then one saw an exceptionally inventive and ambitious child
who had set himself a difficult task and succeeded after several
vain attempts in building an obelisk, a foot-high pyramid, or
a bridge. When play-time was over all these edifices were
knocked down ; all that remained was a litter of bricks on the
linoleum floor ready for the next day’s play-hour.
A very apt illustration, in its small way, of human life. Each
of us, with no other aim but playing (whatsoever lofty pretexts
he alleges to himself), assembles according to ^is fancy the ele-
ments which life provides — the many-coloured bricks he finds
around him when he is born. The most gifted try to make of
their lives a complicated edifice, a real work of art. One should
try to be amongst the gifted, for it is they who get the most
fun out of the game.
Chance supplies the ‘bricks’ which each of us asserribles as
best he can. . . . And has it really much importance whether
the pyramid or bridge he builds is a success?
Night. — Sorry, Paul, to have written as 1 did to-day. If you
read that entry it will revolt you. ‘An old man’s ideas,’ you will
say. Or : ‘A dying man’s.’ You will probably be right. There
are other, less negative, answers to the question you are putting
1058
Antoine’s diary
yourself: — ‘To what end, and for the sake of what should a
man live and work and do his best?’
For the sake of the past and of the future. For your father’s
sake, and for your sons’. As a link in a chain, it is for you to
ensure its continuity. To bequeath your heritage — transmit it
bettered and increased.
Perhaps, when all is said and done, that is the ‘point’ of life.
September 12th. Forenoon . — Have never risen above mediocrity.
With average capacities, suited to what life required of me.
Average brains, plus a good memory and a knack of assimilating
ideas. Character, too, mediocre. All the rest — camouflage.
Afternoon . — Health and happiness are blinkers. Illness removes
them. I am convinced that the most favourable condition for a
sound knowledge of oneself (and of one’s fellow-men) is to haoe
been through an illness and recovered one’s health. Half inclined
to write: the man who ‘has never known a day’s illness’ is
bound to be a fool.
No, I’ve been an average man, and nothing more. With no
real culture ; my stock of ideas was purely professional, restricted
to my calling. The really great man does not abide by such
restrictions. Great doctors, mathematicians, statesmen, do not
confine themselves to medicine, mathematics or politics. They
have far-ranging minds and feel at home in other fields of
knowledge.
Night . — More about myself. Really I am little more than a
man who has had luck. I managed to hit on the career in
which I was best fitted to make good. (This, however, proves
a certain horse sense !) My intellect was not above the average,
just shrewd enough to make the most of favourable conditions.
I was always blinded by pride. I persuaded myself that I
owed ‘everything to my brains and enterprise ; that I had built
up my career and earned the success that came to me. I regarded
myself as a very fine fellow because I had managed to make
others, less gifted than myself, consider me such. Window-
dressing. And it took in even Philip !
But one cannot fool oneself, or others, all the time, and I
suspect life had some bitter disillusionments in store for me.
1059
SUMMER, 1914
I shall never have been more than ‘quite a good doctor’ — one
of the ruck.
September i^th . — Pink sputum this morning, ii a.m. Waiting
for Joseph to appear with the cupping-glasses.
This ugly little world I live in, this bedroom — how well,
how sickeningly well I know each detail of it ! Not a nail, not
a hole left by a drawn nail, not a scratch on the brick-red walls,
on which my eyes have not rested thousands of times. And,
stuck above the looking-glass, those eternal girls flaunting their
silly legs at me! (Yet — who knows? — if one day I had them
removed, I might miss them.)
All the days and days I have passed lying in this bed — I who
was once so active !
Active ! More than merely active. I made a fetish of activity —
like the young nincompoop I was. No, I mustn’t be too hard
on my orgies of activity. All I’ve learned I owe to it; I was
schooled by action, by the daily hand-to-hand tussle with
realities. Even in this hellish war — if I managed to face up to it
so efficiently, that was because at every moment it called for
action.
Afternoon . — Really I was cut out to be a surgeon. I brought
a surgeon’s temperament to the exercise of my profession. To
be a first-rate doctor one needs a gift for contemplation, which
1 have not.
Night . — Still thinking of the ‘man of action’ I used to be.
With a certain severity. I can see now that there was an element
of play-acting in it all. A pose. More to impress myself than to
impress others. (Or if not more, anyhow as much.)
My besetting weakness : a constant need for approbation. (If
you knew, Paul, what that avowal cost me !)
Have repeatedly noticed that others had to be present for
me to get the best out of myself. The sensation of being watched,
appraised, admired, was a fillip to my energies ; I felt capable
of anything, sure of myself and prepared to run any risks, with
others looking on. (E.g. my conduct during the bombardment
of Peronne, at the dressing-station at Montmirail, in the attack
on Brule wood, etc. In civil life, too, I was far shrewder in my
1060
Antoine’s diary
diagnoses and bolder in prescribing treatments when I was
giving my consultations at the hospital, under my colleagues’
eyes, than when I was alone in my consulting-room at home,
dealing with a private patient.)
I realize to-day that true moral strength is of a different order ;
it dispenses with onlookers. Not so in my case. Left alone on
Crusoe’s island, I should probably have killed myself But Man
Friday’s coming would have roused me to feats of heroism.
Night . — Cultivate your will-power, Paul. Nothing’s impossible,
if you can will it strongly enough.
September i^th. — relapse. Retrosternal pains on top of all
the others. Paroxysms of retching for which I can’t account.
Impossible to keep anything down. Have to stay in bed
to-day.
Goiran has brought some newspapers. In Switzerland they
talk about Austro-Hungarian peace proposals ; also of an under-
ground revolutionary movement in Germany. Wonder if there’s
anything in it. Can it be that, thanks to Wilson’s messages,
democratic ideals are beginning to gain ground over there?
Authentic anyhow is the news of an American advance to-
wards Saint-Mihiel. Meaning we are on the way to Briey, and
to Metz. But soon we shall come up against the Hindenburg
line, said to be impregnable.
September i6th . — A shade better. No more vomiting. But very
weak after two days’ fast.
Just read Clemenceau’s reply to the Austrian peace move.
It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The tone is that of a cavalry
colonel — worse, a Pan-Germanist! So our recent successes in
the field are already having their effect. No sooner does a
nation, fancy it is getting the upper hand, than it unmasks
ulterior motives — always of an ‘imperialistic’ order. Wilson will
have his work cut out holding his own against our statesmen,
unless the allied victory is exclusively America’s work. Here
was a golden opportunity for the Entente to make a frank
statement of their intentions. But no, our spokesmen preferred
to bluff, to demand more than they expect to get, so as to make
io6i
SUMMER, 1914
sure of screwing the maximum out of the losers when peace is
declared. As Goiran said, ‘A handful of successes, and already
the Entente is flushed with victory.’
September — They may say what they like, but such
recurrent attacks of broncho-pneumonia have always been
regarded as a sign of smouldering bacterial infection.
September i^th . — Bardot gave me a thorough look-over, fol-
lowed by a consultation with Segre. He diagnosed ‘marked
dilatation of the right ventricle of the heart, with a low blood
pressure and cyanosis.’ I’ve been expecting this for weeks.
Remembered the old adage: ‘When the lungs go wrong,
support the heart.’
Specialities of a medical orderly: never to be on tap when
one needs him urgently, and when his presence is an infernal
nuisance to linger on and on.
September igtk. Night . — Life and death, spanned by the endless
chain of germination. ... A train of thoughts started this
afternoon when Voisenet and I were studying a map of the
Champagne front.
Suddenly a memory flashed up in my mind of that spot,
somewhere to the north-east of Chalons, where we halted in
the middle of a vast, white, arid plain for a hasty meal. (It was
in June, 1917, just after my transfer.) The soil had been ripped
to pieces by successive bombardments — so thoroughly that not
a blade of grass was sprouting. Yet the season was spring, we
were well behind the front line and all the land around had been
brought back under cultivation. Near where we halted, in the
centre of the chalky waste, was a little green oasis. Going up
to it, I found a German graveyard. Above the shallow graves
hidden in the tall grass, over the young corpses, was a profusion
of wild flowers and weeds ; a cloud of butterflies.
Commonplace enough. And yet to-day the memory stirred
emotions unfelt at the time. All this evening I have been musing
on the blind extravagance of nature, and so forth. . . . But
without being able to give shape to my thoughts.
1062
Antoine’s diary
September 20th . — Progress on the Saint Mihiel front. Successful
advance towards the Hindenburg line. Successes in Italy. In
Macedonia. Successes everywhere. And yet . . .
And yet I think of all the lives these victories have cost.
And of something else. How not to feel alarm at the change
that has come over the allied Press since the tide turned in our
favour? Alarming, too, the peremptory way in which Balfour,
Clemenceau and Lansing have rejected the Austrian proposals.
And, I suspect, forced Belgium to turn down Germany’s.
A visit from Goiran. No, I can’t believe the end of the war
so near as he supposes. It will take us long months yet, perhaps
years, to bring into being a German Republic and set solidly
on its feet again the tottering Russian mammoth. And the more
victorious we are, the less disposed we shall be to make a non-
vindictive peace, the only lasting peace.
A futile, irritating discussion with Goiran about ‘progress.’
‘So you don’t believe in progress?’ he remarked. Of course I
believe in it. Only — it’s a miserably slow process. Nothing much
is to be hoped of man for thousands of years yet.
September 21st . — Lunched in the mess. Widely different as are
their views, Lubin, Fabel and Reymond resemble each other
in one respect : all are equally impervious to argument.
Voisenet once said of the Major ; ‘1 shouldn’t be surprised to
learn that his brain-pan’s empty and all the grey matter’s run
down into his spinal cord !’
For Paul . — No truth is more than a stepping-stone. 1 can
recall the days when it was thought that antiseptics had
solved every problem. ‘Kill the microbe !’ was the order of the
day. Since then we have discovered that, in killing the microbe,
we killed living cells as well.
One should feel one’s way ahead; not rush to conclusions.
All paths in the long run prove to be blind alleys. (Instances
of this are frequent in medical research. Have seen men of equal
mental calibre and inspired by an equal zeal for truth, after a
careful study of the same phenomena, come to different, often
diametrically opposite, conclusions, based on identically the
same data.)
1063
SUMMER, 1914
The earlier in life one gives up hankering after certainties, the
better.
September 22nd. — The twinges in my side have become so acute
that once I have settled down anywhere, I dread making a
move. Bardot spoke very highly of an ointment containing
ethyl para-aminobenzoates. Have tried it. Quite ineffective.
September 2^rd. — My chest is so covered with scars that it’s all
they can do to find a new place on it for the cauterizer.
September 2^th. — Yesterday I began to run a swinging
temperature. Made an attempt to get downstairs, however. But
I nearly fainted on the stairs ; had to go back to bed.
How sick I am of this poky little room and its hideous walls !
I keep my eyes shut, not to see them.
Thinking of pre-war days, my past life, my youth. The
driving force of my career was a profound, unshakable belief
in the future. No mere expectation, but real certainty. And now,
where my guiding light was, all is gloom. A fog that never
lifts; the Valley of the Shadow.
Nausea. Bardot had to stay downstairs attending to three new
patients. So it was Mazet who came to see me twice this after-
noon. His uncouth manners and ugly mug arc more than I can
stand just now. Reeking of sweat as usual. My gorge rose.
Thursday, September 26th. — A bad night. They have discovered
new patches of moist rales.
Night. — The injection has given me slight relief. For how long?
A short visit from Goiran left me exhausted. Franco- American
offensive, Anglo-Belgian offensive. Germans falling back all
along the line. On the Balkan front, too, allied successes.
Bulgaria asking for an armistice. Goiran said : ‘Peace with
Bulgaria is the beginning of the end — like the moment in a
pregnancy when the “pains” begin.’
And inside Germany, too, trouble’s brewing. The socialists
have stated the exact terms on which they are prepared to enter
the Cabinet. That widespread discontent exists in Germany is
obvious ; there are frank allusions to it in the Chancellor’s speech.
1064
Antoine’s diary
Things are going almost too well, events moving at a pace
that makes one apprehensive. With Turkey crushed, Austria
and Bulgaria on the verge of capitulating, with victories on
every front, peace will take us unawares — a leap in the dark.
For I doubt if Europe is ripe for a real peace.
At the Grand Hotel in Grasse an American has bet a thousand
dollars to twenty francs that the war will be over before next
Christmas.
Can’t help envying those who have a next Christmas to look
forward to !
September 2"] th . — Debility increasing. Dyspnoea. Since Monday,
complete aphonia. Segre came to see me, at Bardot’s request.
Made a thorough overhaul. Less distant than usual. Worried
about me?
Night . — Sputum examination : pneumococci present, but still
more streptococci, steadily multiplying in spite of the antistrepto-
coccal serum ; all the characteristics of infective complication.
Am to be X-rayed to-morrow morning.
September 28th . — Marked signs of general infection. Bardot and
Mazet come to see me several times a day. Bardot has decided,
after screening me, to do an exploratory needling. What does
he suspect? An abscess in the lung substance?
October 6th . — A terrible week. . . .
Still not up to writing much. Half asleep. A mild pleasure
in picking up this diary again, even in being back in this room,
even in reviewing my ‘beauty girls !’ The simple pleasures of the
sick !
Another reprieve.
Octol)er ']th . — Strength gradually returning. My temperature
has fallen back to normal in the mornings; ioo°-ioi° at
night.
They all thought I was a goner. Wrong, this time !
On Monday the 30th, was moved to the Grasse hospital.
Mical operated on me in the afternoon. Segre and Bardot
1065
SUMMER, 1914
present. A big abscess in the right lung. Well defined, luckily.
Five days later was fit to be brought back here.
Why didn’t I kill myself on the 29th, after the puncture?
Never thought of it. (Literally true !)
October Sth, Tuesday . — Less weak to-day. I suppose I really
ought to feel annoyed that they pulled me through. But I don’t
regret it. Indeed I welcome this new reprieve with a sneaking
satisfaction !
The break in my reading of the papers has made them difficult
to follow. For instance, I didn’t know the German Cabinet had
resigned. That there have been grave happenings over there is
evident. According to the Swiss Press the new Chancellor has
been appointed so as to facilitate peace negotiations.
October gth . — Feeling rather humiliated. I never had the least
inclination to kill myself, did not even think of it, till I was back
in this room. Between the discovery of the abscess and the
operation I had only one idea — that the operation should take
place at the earliest moment . . . and succeed.
Still more humiliating. While in hospital at Grasse, 1 never
ceased regretting having left the amber necklace here. I even
made a resolve to hand it over to Bardot, as soon as I got back,
and extract a promise from him to place it in my coffin.
Amazing !
Doubtful now if I shall do this. A dying man’s whim — mere
silliness ! Yet, Paul, my dear, if I yield to this caprice, please
don’t be in too much of a hurry to write your uncle down a
sentimental fool. The associations of this necklace may concern
a paltry love-affair, but, when all is said and done, that paltry
love-affair was about the best thing in my paltry life !
October loth . — ^A visit from Mical.
October 1 1 th, Friday . — The surgeon’s visit yesterday exhausted
me. He gave me full details. It was a large abscess, well walled
off by a network of tough fibrous tissue. Thick pus, of the con-
sistency of cream. Had to admit there was marked pulmonary
1066
Antoine’s diary
congestion. Bacteriological examination gives cultures of
streptococci,
Mical was interested by my case; such cases are relatively
rare. In seventy-nine mustard gas casualties treated in the last
year there were only seven cases of simple abscess (mine in-
cluded). Four were successfully operated on. As for the other
three . . .
Still rarer, happily, are cases of multiple abscesses. Never
operable. There were only three such cases ; all fatal.
So I’m in luck. ... I wrote that without thinking; had I
stopped to think I would certainly have refrained from talking
of my ‘luck.’ Still, now it’s written, let it stand. Obviously I’m
not yet sufficiently indifferent to life to describe a prolongation
of my sufferings as bad luck.
October I'Zth . — Started getting up again yesterday. My weight
has gone down still more. Lost five pounds since September
20th.
Heart still flagging. Digitalin and drosera twice a day. Pro-
fuse sweats. Feverishness, sudden loss of strength, a dry cough,
fits of choking — all simultaneously. And whenever someone asks
me these days how I am getting on, I reply : ‘Not too badly !’
October I'^th . — The Swiss papers report, plausibly enough,
that the new German Government is approaching Wilson by
indirect channels with a view to opening negotiations. They
even say that a request for an armistice has been actually made.
This is borne out by the Chancellor’s latest speech before the
Reichstag ; it contains a frank proposal of peace. What a change
from the German arrogance of only yesterday !
Let’s hope the Allies keep their heads and resist the tempta-
tion of over-doing their triumph. Already, everywhere, they
are cock-a-hoop as a jockey who has just won the Derby at
long odds. Even Rumelles, I expect, has quite forgotten that
last spring he was prepared for the worst; to-day most likely
none of our conquering heroes is more intransigent than he.
Scandalous, the way that word ‘joy’ crops up persistently in
the French papers ; our feeling should be one of deliverance, not
1067
strMMEk, 1914
of joy. How can they forget so soon the load of distress that
weighs on Europe? Nothing, not even the end of the war, can
alter the fact that grief, not joy, is paramount to-day, and will
remain so for years to come.
October Night . — Insomnia again. I find myself regretting
the lethargy I felt during my relapse. My mind is empty. I am
helpless, at the mercy of my ‘ghosts.’ Just conscious enough to
suffer thoroughly.
Had intended to make this diary a portrait of the man I
was. For Paul. But even when I began it my power of con-
centration, ordering my thoughts, was on the down-grade. . . .
Another hope gone west.
What does it matter? Every day 1 feel more indifferent, more
aloof from everything.
October \<^th . — The ‘big push’ is progressing. Successes all
along the line. It looks as if the fact that peace-talks have begun
has spurred our High Command to force the pace, and make
the most of their last opportunity. The final round.
Feeling a little better to-day. In the mood for writing.
Voisenet dropped in. His flat face, eyes set wide apart in
shallow sockets, and the thick, sleek eyelids like the petals of
certain fleshy flowers (e.g. magnolias, camellias) remind one of
the Buddha’s face in Chinese busts. A large mouth; full,
sluggish lips. A face of ancient wisdom, restful to contemplate,
stamped with a placid, thoroughly Far-Eastern fatalism.
He claims to have inside information as to the state of mind
prevailing in military circles. What he says is alarming. Now
that they feel they can draw indefinitely on the American re-
serve of man-power (said to be ‘inexhaustible’), losses have
ceased to count. And there’s an undercurrent of hostility to an
early peace. The idea is to reject all proposals for an armistice,
to invade Germany and conclude peace at Berlin. And so forth.
As Voisenet says, ‘Victory, not the end of the war, is all they
think about.’ They are becoming more and more antagonistic
to Wilson. Already declaring that the ‘Fourteen Points’ repre-
sent only Wilson’s personal views and have never been endorsed
1068
Antoine’s diary
officially by the Entente. Voisenet pointed out, too, that since
July (when the tide turned in our favour) the Press, controlled
of course by the Censorship, has entirely ceased to speak of a
‘United States of Europe,’ though it still occasionally refers to
a I-eague of Nations.
Night . — Voisenet left with me some copies of fRumanite.
Struck by the sorry figure cut by our socialists — when one has
read and appreciated the American messages. Their tone is
that of narrow party men. Nothing really fine can come of
such ideas, or of people professing them ; these socialist dema-
gogues are survivals from the pre-war age, and must be swept
away like so much other refuse.
Socialism. Democracy. I can’t help wondering if Philip was
not right; the victorious governments may well refuse to give
up the virtual dictatorship they have been exercising during
the last four years. That republican brand of imperialism for
which Clemenceau stands will, I suspect, die hard ! Perhaps it
is in conquered Germany that the true, the coming socialism
will strike root first. Precisely because it’s a defeated country.
October i^th . — Have felt somewhat better during the past week.
Goiran has procured for me the report of Wilson’s last
‘Message.’ While adding little to the previous ones, it defines
his peace aims more explicitly. It announces that the war has
paved the way for a ‘new order,’ an association of all nations —
the only guarantee of collective security. When I consider the
effect such words produce on a man at death’s door like myself,
I can picture what they must mean for the millions of com-
batants, for their wives and families. Impossible that such hopes
should be raised in vain ! Whether or not the allied leaders are
sincere in their adhesion to Wilson’s ‘Points’ hardly matters
now ; things have reached a stage where the pressure of public
opinion will make it impossible, when the hour strikes, for any
European politician to withhold the peace that all desire.
I am thinking of Paul. Of you, my dear Paul. With infinite
relief. A new world is coming to birth. You will witness its
consolidation and play a part in it. Steel your resolve, to play a
worthy part.
1069
SUMMER, 1914
October lyth, Thursday . — A stern response from Wilson to the
first German advances. He insists that before any proposals can
be entertained, the imperialist regime must be abolished, the
military caste excluded from power, and a democratic system
instituted. Obviously this may delay the coming of peace. Still
he was fully justified in taking a firm line. We must not lose
sight of our essential aims. What we are after is not a peace
at any price, nor even a capitulation by the Kaiser. Our aim
is general disarmament and European federation. Neither is
feasible unless imperial Germany and Austria cease to exist.
Goiran much chagrined. I stood up for Wilson against him
and the others ; compared W. to a doctor who knows his job
and drains an abscess before putting on the dressing.
Tcdking of abscesses — my big friend Bardot made it very clear
that abscess of the lung is never a direct result of gassing by
mustard gas vapour. The abscess is always caused by secondary
bacterial infections, for which, however, the lesions following
exposure to the gas have paved the way.
October iZth . — Have the greatest difficulty to-day in over-
coming my fatigue. Not up to reading anything except the
papers.
Incredible the tone they take, gloating over our ‘famous
victories’ ! Like Hugo romanticizing the Nap)oleonic saga !
There’s nothing epic, no heroic glamour about this war (or
any war, for that matter). It has been a brutal, sickening
business and is ending, like a nightmare, in a cold sweat of
remembered dread. Whatever deeds of heroism it called forth
were submerged in horror. In the shambles of the trenches, in
blood and filth. Men fought with the courage of despair. With
the loathing men feel when a dirty job has been assigned them
and they have to see it through. It will leave none but odious
memories. All the pageantry of war — its bugle-calls, parades,
saluting of the colours and so forth — cannot redeem its bea,stli-
ness.
October iist . — Two bad days. Last night had an intertracheal
injection of niaouli. Fibrosis and hyperaesthesia of the larynx
1070
Antoine’s diary
made the injection a tricky business; it was all the three of
them could do to manage it. I saw beads of perspiration standing
out on poor Bardot’s forehead. But I had fully three hours’ sleep
and feel some relief to-day.
October 2$rd, Wednesday . — The new dosage of digitalis seems
more effective. I notice that when my voice is not completely
gone, I stammer more than usual. Formerly 1 rarely stammered,
and only in moments of great mental stress. Now, I suppose, it
is merely a symptom of physical decay.
Read the papers. The Belgians are at Ostend and Bruges.
The British at Lille, Douai, Roubaix and Tourcoing. The whole
front is going forward and nothing can stop it. But the exchange
of Notes between Germany and America is a desperately slow
business. Yet it seemed that Wilson’s preliminary conditions, a
reform of the imperial constitution and the adoption of universal
franchise, had been accepted. That, if true, would be a great
step forward. The next step is the Kaiser’s abdication. Will that
come at once, or only in six months’ time? The Press makes
much of Germany’s domestic troubles. No use hoodwinking
ourselves, however; a revolution in Germany might speed
things up, but it would lead to complications. For Wilson seems
determined not to treat with any but a stable government.
October 2 ^th. — No, I don’t envy the ordinary patient his
ignorance, his wishful illusions. Much nonsense has been talked
about the ‘cruel lucidity’ of the doctor watching himself die. On
the contrary I believe that this lucidity has stood me in good
stead so far. And will, perhaps, help me through the last phase.
Knowledge is no handicap, but a source of strength. I know. I
know what’s going on inside me. I can see my lesions. They
interest me. I watch Bardot trying out his treatments. And, up
to a point, this interest in my state is a great stand-by.
Wish I could analyse this matter to more effect. I’d like to
write to Philip about it.
J^ight . — Had a fairish day. (Have no longer the right to be
exacting.) To lay my ‘ghosts’ 1 fall back on this diary.
It is 3 a.m. I have spent the long sleepless hours pondering
1071'
SUMMER, 1914
on all that each man’s death consigns irrevocably to oblivion.
At first I let this idea fill me with despair — I took its truth for
granted. I was mistaken. Death consigns little, next to nothing,
to nonentity.
Applied myself to delving in my memory. Recalled all sorts
of strictly personal details: mistakes I’d made, little shabby
things I’d done, ‘affairs’ with women. Regarding each I asked
myself: ‘Will it be blotted out of existence along with me? Has
it really left no trace whatever, except in my own life?’ For
the best part of an hour I struggled to recall some incident of my
past, some out-of-the-way act, of which I could feel sure that
absolutely nothing had survived outside my own awareness —
not the slightest after-effect, no moral or material consequence,
no seed of thought that might strike root eventually in another’s
mind. And there was not one incident in my life of which I
did not wind up by discovering that some witness might con-
ceivably exist : someone who knew about the matter or might
have had an inkling of it — someone who, perhaps, was still
alive and, after my death, might by some fluke of memory be
led to recall it. I turned my head on my pillow this side and that,
racked by a preposterous regret, a sense of mortification ; for it
seemed to me that if I failed to discover something of the sort,
my death would be a fiasco, I should not have even the small
solace (for my pride) of taking with me to the grave something
exclusively, uniquely mine.
Suddenly I hit on it ! That incident at the Laennec Hospital ;
the little Arab girl.
So at last I have a memory which 1 know for certain is shared
w'ith no one on earth. Of which nothing, absolutely nothing will
survive the moment I have ceased to breathe.
Daybreak. Utterly worn out, but still unable to sleep. The
moment I doze off a fit of coughing rouses me.
Wrestled all night long with that phantom of the past. Torn
between the temptation of recording my ‘confession’ in this
diary, so as to preserve from extinction that rather squalid
incident, and, on the other hand, thejealous desire to keep it to
myself and have this one small secret to take with me to the grave.
1072
Antoine’s diary
No, I shall write nothing. . . .
October Q^th. Moon . — Is it delirium setting in, or merely nervous
exhaustion? Since last night I can think of my death only in
terms of my ‘secret.’ Death in fact has come to mean for me the
passing of that memory from the world. (Joseph looked in to talk
about the prospects of peace. ‘Seems we’ll be demobbed soon.’
‘Soon, Joseph,’ I replied, ‘I shall be dead.’ Inwardly I thought:
‘Soon nothing will survive of that business with the little Arab
girl.’)
It’s as if all of a sudden I had become master of my fate.
I'hanks to my ‘secret’ I now have the whip-hand of death, since
it depends on me, on a note I choose to write or a remark I
choose to drop, whether that secret is or is not saved from
oblivion.
Afternoon . — When Goiran was here just now, could not refrain
from alluding to it. Gave nothing definite away, of course,. Did
not even mention the Arab girl, or the name of the hospital. Just
like a child who’s bursting with a secret. ‘I know something, but
I shan’t tell !* Goiran gave me a queer, rather startled look.
Must have wondered if my brain was going. But I, for the last
time most likely, felt a tremendous thrill of pride.
Night . — Tried to rest my mind by reading the papers. In
Germany, too, the military clique is intriguing against peace. It
seems that Ludendorff is at the head of a movement against the
Chancellor whom he charges with treachery for having pro-
posed negotiations with America. But the forces working for
peace have prevailed. And Ludendorff has been compelled to
resign his post of Commander-in-Chief. A healthy sign.
Balfour’s latest speech rather perturbing; the British are
beginning to ‘ask for more,’ and there’s talk of annexing the
German colonies. Goiran reminded me that only last year Lord
Robert Cecil, speaking in the House, reiterated that it was with
no idea of territorial expansion the British had come into the
war. (They’ll not go out of it, I fear, as they came in.)
Happily there’s Wilson to be reckoned with. A champion of
the right of self-determination for all nations. I trust he will not
let the victors share out the black races like so much live-stock.
1073
NN
SUMMER, 1914
Goiran very strong on the colonial problem. Showed very
clearly what a shocking blunder the Allies would be making if
they yielded to the temptation of annexing the German
colonies. This is a unique opportunity for overhauling the whole
question of colonization. Under the auspices of the League all
the resources of the world should now be pooled for the common
use. The surest guarantee of peace.
October 26th . — A sudden turn for the worse. Stifling fits all
day.
October 27/A. — My stifling fits tend to take a new form —
spasmodic and extremely painful. My larynx gets stenosed, as
if it were gripped in a clenched fist. I have a feeling of being
slowly strangled.
Spent nearly an hour recording in my case-history the pro-
gress of the disease. Doubt if I shall be able to keep up the case-
history much longer.
October 28/A. — Young Marius has just brought up the news-
papers. The sight of his pink cheeks, bright eyes, the ‘panoply
of youth’ — his marvellous thoughtlessness about his health — had
a most distressing effect on me. Nowadays would rather see oid
men and invalids only. Can well understand a prisoner con-
demned to death flinging himself on his warder and strangling
him, just to rid his eyes of the man’s blatant freedom.
The physical machine is breaking down more and more
quickly. Can’t believe my mind is going the same way, but
perhaps already it is too enfeebled to realize what is happening
to it.
October 29/A. — Should I find these self-communings less
painful, if I had what novelists would call a ‘great love’ to
look back on? I still think about Rachel. Qpite often. But from
a sick man’s self-centred view-point. I tell myself it would be
wonderful to have her here, and die in her arms.
What a thrill I felt when I found her necklace in my room
at Paris, and how I longed for her ! . . . But that’s all over now.
1074
Antoine’s diary
Did I ‘love’ her? Nobody else, in any case. No other woman
more, and none as much. But whether I was what they call ‘in
love’ with her I’ve no idea.
Night . — For two days now digitalis has taken no effect. Bardot
is coming presently to try an injection of camphorated ether.
October 30/A. — Visitors. Active, busy people. What has life in
store for them? Very likely it is I, the lucky one!
Tired. Sick and tired of everything. So tired that my one wish
is for it all to be ended.
I could see I startled them. Obviously I have changed a lot
during these last few days. Sinking rapidly. I must have the
face of an asphyxiated man, the staring, horror-stricken eyes;
I know what that looks like — nothing could be ghastlier.
October 31 5/. — The padre let me know he wanted to visit
me. He came on Saturday but I was in too much pain to sec
him. Let him have his way to-day. Very boring. He started in
about my ‘Christian upbringing,’ etc. I said ; ‘Not my fault if
I was born with an itch for understanding and an incapacity
for believing.’ Wanted to bring me some ‘good books.’ I said
to him: ‘Tell me: why don’t the Churches make a stand
against war? Why do your French and German bishops bless
the flags, and sing Te Deums to thank God for a bloody
butchery?’ To which he made the amazing (but orthodox) re-
joinder: ‘A just war removes the Christian ban on murder.’
A studiously cordial conversation, however. But he couldn’t
hit on an angle from which to tackle me. Said to me as he went
out : ‘Oh come now I Surely a man of your calibre can’t admit
that he will perish — like a dog !’ I replied : ‘What can I do
about it if I’m an unbeliever — like a dog?’ Fie stopped at the
door and threw a curious look at me ; a mixture of severity,
surprise and sadness, with (it seemed to me) a hint of affection.
‘Why malign yourself, my son?’ I don’t think he’ll come again.
Night . — Could bring myself to do it if I thought it would
give anyone pleasure. But nobody that I can see would be the
happier if I pretended to die a Christian death.
Austria is asking Italy for an armistice. (Goiran has just come
1075
SUMMER, 1914
with the news.) Hungary’s proclaimed her independence, and a
republic. Peace at last?
November ist. Morning. — The month of my death. Loss of
hope is worse than the pangs of thirst. In spite of all, life still
throbs within me. So strongly that sometimes I forget. For a
while I am the man I was, that others are, and start — of all
things — making plans ! But then an icy wind sweeps down on
me; and again I know.
Mazet comes to see me less often ; a bad sign. And when he
comes he talks on every subject except (as far as possible)
myself.
Am I going to regret old Mazet with his convict-warder airs
and thick square head?
Night. — Hardly believable that, beyond the threshold of this
room, the world of living men continues. How utterly remote
from it I feel already! No living man could realize that
isolation.
November 2nd. — Have ceased getting up. For the last three
days have not taken even the three steps between my bed and
the arm-chair.
Never again. Never again shall I sit at that window. Or any
window. Never again see those tall cypresses posted like sentinels
against the evening sky. . . . Can it be true — that I shall
never see again that garden; or any garden?
I write ‘never again’ ; but only catch faint glimpses of the
horror of great darkness behind those words.
Night. — How will death come? How many times a night, and
for how many nights have I been asking myself that question I
There are so many possible ways. A sudden, sharp laryngeal
spasm as was the case with young Neidhart. Or a gradually
increasing one as in Silbert’s case. Or will it be cardiac failure
and syncope — the end of Monvielle and Poiret?
November ^rd. Morning. — The worst form of death was poor
Troyat’s : asphyxia. A ghastly end ! I shall not wait for it.
Evening. — Felt so ill this afternoon that I sent for Bardot twice.
1076
Antoine’s diary
He is coming back towards midnight. Absent-minded. Left his
tracheotomy set on my table.
They say: ‘Death is nothing; it’s dying hurts.’ 1 have the
means of cutting it short; why do I go on suffering — putting
it off? Yet I do go on — incorrigibly!
November \th. — Armistice signed between Italy and Austria-
Hungary.
The padre has tried to see me again. Had him told I was
too weak to see him. But it’s a warning; high time to make the
plunge.
November ^th. — All that I hoped to do, all 1 should have liked
to do, all I have failed to do — you, Paul my dear, must do for
me some day.
November 6th. — An armistice any moment now, Goiran says.
Yet on all fronts there’s fighting going on. Why’
Complete aphonia; unable to utter a word.
Novembei ^th. — The vocal cords have almost ceased to move.
Paralysis of the arytenoids setting in? Bardot reticent.
Mor])hia.
November 8//<.— German plenipotentiaries have crossed our
lines. The end. Anyhow have lived to see it.
November Qth.—^h.diVp turn for the worse. Swinging temperature
again. (98.5° to 103°.) The pulmonary congestion has come
back; no new symptoms, but a widespread recrudescence.
Asked them (Why? I wonder) to take another X-ray plate,
and find out if there is a new septic focus. Afraid another
abscess is forming. This swinging temperature is a sure sign of
deep-seated suppuration.
November 10th. — Right lung more and more painful. Morphia
all the day, orally. Bardot doesn’t think there’s a new abscess.
No pathognomonic symptom.
Sputum rather less copious.
1077
SUMMER, 1914
Revolution at Berlin. The Kaiser gone. In the lines every-
where, men are full of hope, breathing again. And I . . . !
November \ith. — K horrible day. Intense burning pains at
certain points, always the same, on my right side.
Why didn’t I do it sooner, before my strength failed? And
now — ^what am I waiting for? Each time I tell myself, ‘The
moment has come,’ I . . . No. Not true. Never yet thought
‘has come.’ Only ‘is near.’ So I wait on. . . .
November 12th. — Bardot detects a patch of consolidation sur-
rounded by a zone of localized (?) moist rMes.
Noon. — X-ray shows semi-opaque area, without precise
limits, at the right apex. Diaphragm does not move. Generalized
diminution of translucency, increase of lung stroma, but no
detectable abscess. If another abscess had formed there would
be complete opacity in the affected area, with a sharply defined
periphery. What can it be, then? The signs are still too vague
to justify an exploratory puncture. If it’s not another abscess
forming, what can be the explanation?
November i^th. — Bouts of highly localized oedema persistently
recurring at the same points. Obviously the infection is becoming
generalized. Profuse, pungent sweats.
Night. — Can it be a patch of miliary abscesses — widely dis-
seminated? Multiple abscesses? (Bardot must have considered
this possibility.) In that case nothing can be done; the abscesses
being scattered through the lung tissue, no operation is possible
and asphyxia will bring the end.
November i^th. — Burning pains in both sides. The left lung,
too, is now oedematous ; the abscesses must be spreading through
both lungs. As a last chance will they try inducing a fixation
abscess?
Night. — In the depths of discouragement ; utter indifference.
A letter from Jenny and one from Gise have been lying since
yesterday in my drawer. Another from Jenny came this evening.
All unopened. Leave me alone. Nothing left for anyone.
1078
an’toine’s diary
Keep on repeating to myself words I now comprehend for
the first time : De profmdis clamavi.
November i^th. — Perhaps was wrong to dread it so much;
may not be so terrible as I thought. Perhaps the worst is over.
Have figured out the end so often ; too weak now for that. But
everything’s ready, within arm’s reach,
November i 6 th. — Nothing came of the fixation abscess. Did
they really try it, or only pretend?
Written nothing in the case-history for two days. Too much
pain.
Must decide when. Hard to tell oneself ‘To-morrow,’ or ‘This
evening.’
November i-jth. — Morphia. Solitude, silence. Hourly more
aloof, cut off' from everything. Can still hear them talking, but
listen no longer. Almost impossible now to cough up the
necrotic tissue.
How will it come? Would like to keep my head clear and go
on writing, up to the last moment.
Not resignation. Indifference. Exhaustion crushing out
revolt. What must be, must. Surrender to pain.
Peace.
Have done with it. . . .
November i8fA.— Oedema spreading to the legs. High time — or
my strength may fail. All’s ready; I need only steel my will,
reach for the syringe.
Struggled all last night.
High time.
Mohday, November i^th, 1918.
37 years, 4 months, 9 days.
Simpler than one thinks.
Good-bye, Paul.
FINIS
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